The film features an ensemble cast that includes Hideaki Itō, Kōichi Satō, Yūsuke Iseya, Masanobu Andō, Masato Sakai, Yoji Tanaka, Renji Ishibashi, Sansei Shiomi, Takaaki Ishibashi, Shun Oguri, Quentin Tarantino, Yutaka Matsushige, Yoshino Kimura, Teruyuki Kagawa and Kaori Momoi.

A lone gunman travels to the town of Yuta, which is run by the warring clans of the white-colored Genji and red-colored Heike.

After ignoring requests from both clans to join them, he is given shelter by a woman named Ruriko, who takes care of her mute grandson Heihachi.

The Heike-aligned sheriff tells the gunman that in the midst of the chaos, a Heike man named Akira married a Genji woman named Shizuka and lived peacefully with their son Heihachi, until Heike leader Kiyomori killed Akira in cold blood, rendering Heihachi mute from the trauma.

Ruriko's servant Toshio suddenly appears and throws a gun at her before she shoots and kills Yoichi and his henchmen, revealing herself to be Bloody Benten.

Ruriko plans to settle the score with the Genjis once and for all by luring them with a chest loaded with gold nuggets in the middle of town.

Inspired by the historical rivalry between the Genji and Heike clans, which ushered in the era of samurai dominance in Japanese history, Sukiyaki Western Django is set "a few hundred years after the Genpei War".

The website's critical consensus reads, "Inventive and off-kilter, the newest feast from J-Horror director Takashi Miike is super-sensory, self-referential and somewhat excessive.

[1] When Sukiyaki Western Django premiered as part of the "Midnight Madness" program at the Toronto International Film Festival in its re-edited version, it received mixed reviews.

magazine wrote admiringly: "The fast-paced action is well staged on a set that borrows from both western and samurai traditions; Miike mixes both good old gunplay (a Gatling gun that’s housed in the original film’s iconic coffin) and martial arts swordplay, which intermingle cohesively until the last fight.