Branded to Kill

Butterfly Kiss
I was inspired to seek out Branded to Kill as it's one of Jim Jarmusch's favorite films, and he's one of my favorite filmmakers. You could say that his interest in Japanese pop culture first came to the fore in Mystery Train, the darkly comic tale of two Japanese tourists on a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Elvis. But it's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, which mostly clearly takes its inspiration from Seijun Suzuki's bizarre, yet strangely beautiful Branded to Kill. Certainly, the external trappings are different (Suzuki's film is in B&W, it's set in Japan, RZA most definitely did not compose the soundtrack, etc.), but the central characters are cut from the same inscrutable cloth. Arguably, Ghost Dog also takes its inspiration from another non-American noir released in '67--Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai with Alain Delon as, you guessed it, a bird-loving hitman of few words (a film that, in turn, inspired John Woo's The Killer).

Branded to Kill plays like a cross...

What's It Worth?
Honestly, I was expecting a New Wave film, but what I got was a film that, stylistically, compares with the New Wave, but fails to achieve New Wave pathos. But that doesn't mean "Branded to Kill" is a bad film, it just means you have to look at it from a different perspective: The film is fluff, substance is style. It's lack of cohesion seems to be an intellectual bluff rather than a conscious, "artistic" convention. Therefore, the film should be compared to the films of Roger Corman and the Blaxploitation era.

"Branded to Kill" seems like the Asian precursor to films like "Hard Boiled" and "The Killer". BTK's action scenes are inventive and frenzied. They are not "realistic", but they fit within the film's tone, which is unrealistic anyway. Everything is over the top, and the film has that "go for broke" feeling of the New Wave. You have to admire Suzuki's moxy, which suits the era and environment in...

Butterflys, rice cookers and Chipmunk Joe make this a Japanese B-film extraordinaire....
It certainly does take a certain kind of film buff to enjoy this film. Style over substance is the order of the day, and one must be willing to sacrifice a coherent plot line for an excess of style. In this film the way a thing gets done takes precedence over the thing that is done. Don't get me wrong- the basic idea of the story is simple. however the style almost becomes the story and this is something we are not all used to. (You might want to see Kill Bill first and then Tokyo Drifter before this one). I won't go into the plot here because I think it's better if you don't have any expectations before watching this one. The black and white cinematography is superb. The sound is as good as can be expected. The extras are minimal, however it is a criterion release, so it required viewing. The only thing that could have made it better would be if Bela Lugosi were in it....

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