"Branded to Kill" is a stylish, inventive and thoroughly modern piece of '60s Japanese noir, at turns sexy
and psychologicaly creepy. It's also one of the most influential Japanese films ever made.
Released in 1967 and directed by Seijun Suzuki, "Branded to Kill" ("Koroshi no Rakuin" in Japanese) is the story
of a yakuza hitman and his battle to stay alive after he botches a job and finds himself
in the cross hairs of another hitman's rifle.
Jo Shishido stars as "No. 3 Killer." After he misses hitting his assigned target (a butterfly lands on his rifle,
blocking his telescope), the mysterious and higher-ranking "No. 1 Killer" is sent to rub him out.
Meanwhile, the even more mysterious client who ordered the failed assassination attempt,
a woman named Misako (played by Annu Mari), becomes the object of No. 3's obsessive and unrequited love.
With what is one of the most memorable character traits imagineable, No. 3
is a hitman with a peculiar fetish--he is aroused and comforted by the smell
of boiled rice. The quirk is a symbolic cultural touch to Suzuki's film, as rice is a staple of almost every Japanese meal.
The underlying pathology of the bizarre fetish is never explained, but it not only puts a Japanese stamp on the
movie, it adds another droll layer.
Elements of the film's script and style are similar to that of French new wave of Jean-Luc Godard. Suzuki's aesthetic in "Branded" most closely
echoes the noir of Godard's "Alphaville." There's also a subtle sense of humor to the film in the way it mocks
and hyper-emphasizes the sillier conventions of the B-movie gangster genre. The film's comic touches has the kind of detached
spy-versus-spy humor found in certain episodes of '60s British cult television series
"The Prisoner" (as does its use of agents with numbers for names).
Testament to "Branded"'s influence can be seen most recently in the Jim
Jarmusch film "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai," a modern hip-hop-mafia take on gang loyalty and honor.
Jarmusch pays homage to Suzuki by copying a clever scene in which the hitman kills his target by shooting his gun through the plumbing
connected to a sink. When the mark goes to the sink to wash up, No. 3 fires into the water pipe and cuts his victim down.
It's worth noting that Seijun Suzuki is a director whose best films have been more widely celebrated decades after
they were made than at the time of theatrical release. "Branded to Kill" marked his last major
film as an in-house director at Nikkatsu movie studios, as well as the end of his prime as a filmmaker.
With nearly fifty films to his credit, the once obscure Suzuki has now been aknowledged as an exceptionally innovative
filmmaker, especially in the West. Though he has directed and acted in a handful of films during the past three decades,
his greatest cinematic achievement is the modern yakuza pulp flick of the 1960s.
What makes "Branded" and other Suzuki films from the era so remarkable was that they were
produced as B-movies
with limited resources and under a factory-like studio production system that rolled out celluloid schlock the same way
Toyota rolls out compact cars.
When Suzuki turned in "Branded to Kill," he was fired from Nikkatsu for making a film deemed too confusing for audiences.
But Suzuki wasn't trying so much to cut an artistic path as much as create compelling and original pulp fiction
within the constraints of an exhausted film genre.
On films such as "Branded" and "Tokyo Drifter"," Suzuki invariably was assigned film projects and told which scripts and actors he'd have to
use. It's amazing that "Branded to Kill" could be made
under such conditions. But in Suzuki's hands, an otherwise pedestrian production was turned into a
film with a refreshingly modern twist bordering on the avant-garde.
On the new DVD by Criterion there's an interview with an elderly, white-haired Suzuki. (Suzuki is now in his eighties.) Despite
his advanced age,
the director is spry, lucid and engaging as he gives a first-hand backgrounder on his filmmaking years and the making of
"Branded to Kill." It's must-see viewing for cineastes.
-- Jay Han + Ivan Corsa
|
RELATED LINKS
+ Biography: Seijun Suzuki [MSN Entertainment]
+ Reviews - "Tokyo Drifter" and "Branded to Kill" [Deep Focus]
+ Seijun Suzuki Filmography [New York Times]
+ Branded to Kill Review [All Movie Guide / NY Times]
+ Essay - Branded to Kill by John Zorn
+ Interview - Suzuki Seijun [Midnight Eye]
+ Essay - Seijun Suzuki: Authority in the Minority by Stephen Teo
+ Seijun Suzuki Fan Web Site
+ Jo Shisido Fan Web Site
+ Official Nikkatsu Motion Picture Company Web Site
PREVIOUS
February 17, 2004 | New York City -- Movie Reviews -- Japanese Video Night Part I: "Battle Royale"
Finding a good Japanese film to take home on video isn't always the easiest thing to do. Most video stores have poorly stocked foreign
film sections, let alone enough Japanese titles to warrant a label and a shelf.
Sure, every shop carries the requisite couple of Akira Kurosawa films, usually the
"Seven Samurai" and
"Rashomon," and maybe there are a few anime titles (invariably mis-stocked as a "cartoons" in the children's section)
and maybe there's that one Juzo Itami flick from the '80s,
"Tampopo."
And that's it.
Selection is not only a result of a particular store, but also geography. If you're in The BIG Big City,
your situation looks better. Even a big chain like Tower Video often has a decent
foreign movie section...
..."Battle Royale" is
teenage violence taken to the next level: national extreme sports event.
Based on the bestselling novel by Koushun Takami and directed by the late Kinji Fukasaku,
the story is set in a Japan where each year one high school class is selected
for Battle Royale, or B.R., a last-man standing competition wherein a matter of days the students must fight it to the death
on an abandoned island.
Think of it as "Lord of Flies"
meets "Survivor" meets high school ...
BUT WITH GUNS! The game ends when all but one of the student body have been murdered.
To put the game in a socio-cultural context, consider the following backgrounder that appears at the begiining of the film:
"At the dawn of the Millenium, the nation collapsed. At 15% unemployment, 10 million were out of work, 800,000 students
boycotted school. The adults lost confidence, and fearing the youth, eventually passed the 'Millenium Educational Reform Act' ... AKA:
The B.R. Act."
The blood-letting is staggering. The violence is mindless, though it's mostly unleashed in the name of survival. With some
forty-plus students in the class, one would think that killing off each and every one of them, which the film thoroughly and
graphically documents, would quickly become tedious. It doesn't. People die in all sorts of fascinating ways and circumstances,
some predictable, but many more in ways you may never have imagined...
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