Ambition kills, and this film is the embodiment of that. We follow Hanada, a hitman working for the Yakuza who occupies an underworld where assassins are ranked. He is #3, one of the best out there, but by virtue this entails a #2 and #1. And so here is a world where everyone is stratified into tiers, people less of people and more pawns in a larger game.

For many that might as well be what this is, a game of sorts where everyone is pitted against one another and anyone who exists outside of this shadowy sphere mere bystanders who occasionally get hurt in the crossfire. Hanada, like all these other mobsters, is so fixated on the inner machinations…

Suzuki is one of the most versatile directors of the Noberu Bagu, which is compliment enough, even if he is not necessarily the best. He shifted from noir tributes, to exploitation, to anti-war humanist testaments, to treating themes of prostitution in several ways, to cinematic pulp fiction, to flat-out experimentation. Branded to Kill is the bastard son of the peculiarities of the Japanese New Wave: a crime-oriented plot with magically ranked hitmen including one third-ranked hitman that has an unbelievably cool and equally ridiculous fetish for sniffing boiling rice, a wife that is obsessed with sex and behaves like mentally demented, a Ju-On-like femme-fatale lover that surrounds herself by dead birds and butterflies with eagerness for sex and that water…

After completely enjoying the 1967 Takashi Nomura film, A Colt Is My Passport, a wonderful continuation of the rich history of other countries adopting the American Western, and making the genre their own, a LB friend recommended another starring chipmunk cheeked Jô Shishido to my film partner in crime wife.

I walked into this one without any knowledge of its stature or of the history of the director, other than the affectation that it earned a Criterion release. Since watching, I haven’t done my usual perusal of LB friend’s ratings. I have read the Criterion essays included with the disk before writing this.

When the film was over, I was ready to give it 2 stars. Upon gestation, and before…

Rest in Peace Master Seijun Suzuki.

Hanada is Ranked Third Hitman. He meets an ex hitman Kasuga who asks him if he can assist him on a job. Hanada agrees. As the job seem easy, they both take a man to his destination point but are stopped by an ambush. While Hanada kills one by one, Kasuga cowardly tries to hide but finally dies.

After the ambush Hanada meets a mysterious women Misako who just wants to die. The next day Hanada gets an contract to kill three men which he does successfully, but fails when to kill his target which was given by Misako. And soon he Branded to Kill and game for survival, obsessive love and warring down…

Your training is inadequate.
-Number One

Director Seijun Suzuki and star Jô Shishido's sixth and final film together would be the one that pushed the studio, Nikkatsu, to fire the director for making a film they claimed to be incomprehensible and unprofitable. A lawsuit would ensue resulting in Suzuki becoming a bigger legend then ever before while also being blacklisted by all major studios. It would be a decade before he was able to direct another studio film while Branded to Kill would go on to become one of his biggest international cult hits with both audiences and critics.

Shishido is the #3 ranked hitman in the Japanese underworld; Goro Hanada. On the job there is none cooler then Hanada,…

Part of March Around the World 2016. Today: Japan!

I haven't seen much Suzuki - only Tokyo Drifter - but I have in my possession a copy of the book Eros in Hell: Sex, Death and Madness in Japanese Cinema. In this book, the following exchange occurs between a French critic and a Japanese director regarding the impromptu musical numbers in Tokyo Drifter.

Takao Nakano: Seijun Suzuki didn't shoot such scenes in order to make the audience laugh; he did it earnestly to please them. [...]
Romain Slocombe: French people have recently become interested in Seijun Suzuki. They think his films are parodic comedies.
Takao Nakano: I see what you mean, because his films could be interpreted in different ways.…

Seijun Suzuki, a maverick filmmaker working against the studio's wishes by making a film totally eclectic, visceral and wonderfully absurd, starring an actor in Joe Shishido who ten years earlier had augmented his cheeks to enhance his look (chipmunk-like anyone?) achieved a cult following with 1967's Branded to Kill, even at the cost of a ten year hiatus on his film career.

The first thing that strikes you as you enter Suzuki's crazy world, is how much you need to get your bearings, because much like the free jazz score, the film has a rhythm of it's own and can feel slightly disorienting, but once you are on board it is smooth sailing all the way. As we follow the…

☆"Who do you think did it?"
"Either No. 2, Sakura; or No. 4, Ko; or maybe the mysterious No. 1."☆

There's no shame in being No. 3. This is my third Suzuki film, so there you go. However, I was led to believe, in my childhood, that after first being "the worst" and second being "the best," third was "the one with the hairy chest." Hm, well this movie put some more hair on my chest perhaps.

Let's dive right into another Seijun Suzuki film after this morning's historical satire of fascistic masculinity in Fighting Elegy, and see what many say is his most acclaimed film, the stylized Yakuza thriller Branded to Kill. If that short description sounds familiar, perhaps…

Ambition kills, and this film is the embodiment of that. We follow Hanada, a hitman working for the Yakuza who occupies an underworld where assassins are ranked. He is #3, one of the best out there, but by virtue this entails a #2 and #1. And so here is a world where everyone is stratified into tiers, people less of people and more pawns in a larger game.

For many that might as well be what this is, a game of sorts where everyone is pitted against one another and anyone who exists outside of this shadowy sphere mere bystanders who occasionally get hurt in the crossfire. Hanada, like all these other mobsters, is so fixated on the inner machinations…