Every hip movie about a hitman must have taken something from the Japanese cult classic Branded To Kill (1967; Koroshi no rakuin); for example, Jim Jarmusch lifted a drain-pipe kill from it for Ghost Dog: Way Of The Samurai. Directed by Seijun Suzuki and starring Joe Shishido, Branded To Kill is a dazzling, dark, funny and oddball experience that clocks in at a snappy 98 minutes. Shishido plays Goro Hanada, ranked number three on the list of hitmen, who has a curious fetish for smelling cooked rice, one of the original touches that adds to the overall weirdness running throughout the film. Hanada is distracted from his wife Mami (Mariko Ogawa) by a suicidal client Misako Nakajo (Annu Mari), a femme fatale with her own obsession (dead birds and butterflies) as well as competition with the Number One Killer (Koji Nanbara) that takes some considerably loopy turns in their mutual antagonism. Shishido is great taking this cool character from detached aloofness to being psychologically and emotionally exhausted, and Mari creates such a memorable character in the proto-goth Misako. In comparison to the bright colours of Suzuki’s Tokyo Drifter, this is filmed in black and white but is no less visually striking with its compositions ranging from film noir aesthetics, James Bond theatrics, avant garde art house framing to wacky cartoon gags. When you keep hearing a film is great, then you finally watch it and in the first ten minutes you’re like “Yeah, they were right – this is great.” That was Branded To Kill for me. Streaming on Stan and Kanopy. Recommended.
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