Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) YTS

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by CRCulver 7 / 10

The eponymous protagonist of Jim Jarmusch's 1999 film

The eponymous protagonist of Jim Jarmusch's 1999 film GHOST DOG is an African-American hitman (Forest Whitaker) working for an Italian mafia in New Jersey and living according to the Hagakure, Japan's samurai code. After a hit goes wrong through no fault of the assassin's own, his mafia liaison Louie (John Tormey) is sympathetic, but explains that his superiors now want Ghost Dog dead. The film follows Ghost Dog's revenge and depicts a clash between two ancient tribes that both seem out of date in this modern world: Ghost Dog's samurai code and Italian mafia ideas of loyalty. Jarmusch has always been open about the fact that he soaks up a huge number of inspirations from earlier films, books, and music and then lets them reflect in his own work. Any cinephile will instantly recognize Jean-Pierre Melville's 1967 film Le Samouraï as the point of departure for GHOST DOG. In Meville's classic, a Parisian hired assassin lives according to a strict code. But Melville didn't really know much about Japan, and even the quotation from a samurai text at the beginning of his film was just made up by Meville himself. Jarmusch seems to have decided, "OK, I'll show you a hired-assassin film that's *really* rooted in the code of the Samurai". Forest Whitaker quotes from Hagakure throughout the film, and there are also references to the work of Akira Kurosawa. But GHOST DOG is not a remake, and Jarmusch takes the basic premise in a very individual direction. There's a lot of humour here, something missing from the serious Melville inspiration. In casting for the mafia dons, Jarmusch chose faces as brutal and distinctive as Dick Tracy's rogues gallery: Henry Silva as the don, and Cliff Gorman and Gene Ruffini as his righthand men. But Jarmusch then gives them the occasional zany line that cracks that chilling façade. Isaach de Bankole plays a supporting role as a French-speaking Haitian immigrant and Ghost Dog's best friend, a role that is pure comic relief because the man doesn't speak English and Ghost Dog doesn't understand French, but they always manage to understand each other. Until the late 1990s, Jarmusch had mainly been known as a fairly low-budget independent filmmaker writing cute little stories about personal relationships in low-key American life. Jarmusch's America was consistently depicted as run-down neighbourhoods and overgrown vacant lots. With its generous budget, large cast and special effects, GHOST DOG marked a huge leap forward in Jarmusch's work. Still, it maintains Jarmusch's interest in America as a land of urban blight and seedy underbellies: most of the film takes place in an ugly New Jersey urban setting. Furthermore, instead of being glamorized, the Italian mafia is depicted as a spent force, mainly elderly men who can't rake in the cash and influence they used to, and even forced to pay protection money to Chinese newcomers. As the film reaches its shocking ending, the glamour is drained from Ghost Dog's warrior code, as well. The music for GHOST DOG was provided by RZA, at the time still best known as part of the Wu-Tang Clan. The music mainly consists of wordless beats, though, with actual rapping only at a few points. Personally, I find the use of hip-hop a weak point of the film (Jarmusch looks like an outsider looking in to this scene, unable to organically make it part of his own work), and RZA's insistence on appearing in the film itself disrupts the rhythm of the film's climax.

Reviewed by badelf 8 / 10

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)

**Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)** _Directed by Jim Jarmusch_ Honestly, I've never been a huge fan of Jim Jarmusch; he never fully captured my attention. But Ghost Dog I enjoyed immensely, primarily because Forest Whitaker did an amazing job of encapsulating the feeling of a zen martial artist. My own Buddhist training began in a Karate class with a teacher who was himself brought up in Japanese monastery training, authentic in other words. So I know what that discipline looks like, what that stillness costs, and Whitaker gets it right. He moves through the world with the economy and precision of someone who has internalized the code completely. The samurai angle, with passages from the Hagakure woven throughout, was deeply attractive to me. The film takes bushido seriously, not as exotic decoration but as a lived philosophy of service, loyalty, and acceptance of death. And the fact that Ghost Dog is invisible at night, moving like a ninja through the urban landscape, was a level up: The film understands that a warrior can move through the world without disturbing it. Outside that, the RZA soundtrack was fantastic, appropriate and completely enjoyable. The score never overwhelms; it supports the meditative quality of Ghost Dog's existence while giving the film a contemporary edge. I loved the bit with Whitaker and the Haitian ice cream man being good friends when neither understood the other's language. That was a beautiful touch, a quiet argument that connection transcends words, that friendship can exist in gestures and presence alone. As usual with Jarmusch, there's something that pulls me from suspension of disbelief. In this case, the "mafia" was too much like caricature. I have been close to some old mafia. They have great senses of humor, are intelligent, and real; not caricatures. Jarmusch's mobsters feel like they wandered in from a parody, bumbling and cartoonish in a way that undermines the gravity of Ghost Dog's world. It's a shame, because the film works best when it's taking itself seriously. In spite of that, I'll give the film an 8/10. Whitaker's performance alone is worth the watch, and for anyone interested in how ancient warrior codes translate into modern contexts, Ghost Dog offers something rare: a meditation on honor in a dishonorable world, executed with sincerity and style.

Reviewed by lasttimeisaw 8 / 10

worth cherry-picking by Jarmusch newbies and diehards alike

Conflating the samurai tenet within a tailing-off gangster underworld in an unnamed USA city, Jim Jarmusch's version of LE SAMOURAI is profoundly branded with his idiosyncrasies: a nocturnal cityscape tinged with retro-flair (mostly seen behind the wheels), a vibrating, mind-bending, killer soundtrack (courtesy to RZA), a perversity and absurdity presiding over the turn of events (cartoon hooked mobsters, a lethal shot fired from a drain pipe, the cameo of Gary Farmer's Nobody from DEAD MAN 1995, etc.), a tangy timbre of acedia inhabits in some of his dramatis personae (the boss's daughter portrayed with crashing nonchalance by a sylph-like Tricia Vessey) and a total abandon of anhedonia (twice, the dog's gaze is the self-reflexive bellwether of a preordained corollary).Ghost Dog (Whitaker), a self-claimed retainer of the world-weary mobster Louie (Tormey), who has saved his life eight years ago, is a proficient hit-man abiding by the codes of HAGAKURE: THE BOOK OF THE SAMAURAI, written by Yamamoto Tsunetomo in the early 18th century, living alone in the top of a building with a bevy of messenger pigeons, his disciplined life and allegiance is challenged when the local mafia boss Ray Vargo (a deadpan Silva) and his right-hand man Sonny Valerio (Gorman), both superiors of Louie, decide to do away with Ghost Dog as a scapegoat for a mission he has adroitly accomplished, a fatuous move because they have no inking of Ghost Dog's credentials, who will become their imminent nemesis, save the wobbling Louie, who is inadvertently submitted to the receiving end of Ghost Dog's undivided loyalty, chiming in with the RASHOMON (a book which undergoes a ritualistic full circle in the end) motif, even their recollections of their first encounter are different (with clear visual aid here), which shrewdly explains the discrepancy of their attitudes, for Louie it may be merely a self-defense, yet for Ghost Dog, he roundly leaves his own life to the mercy of Louie. An artistically knowing discord looms large between Ghost Dog's zippy choreography and efficiency to rub out his over-confident but ponderous, long-in-the-tooth rivals and a languid but cordial narrative arc encompassing Ghost Dog, his best friend Raymond (De Bankolé), a francophone-only Haitian ice-cream vandor, and a prepubescent bookworm Pearline (Winbush), to whom Ghost Dog eventually lends HAGAKURE, a deed of passing on his mantle. Forest Whitaker superbly channels a less laconic Alain Delon in the titular role, but is far more superior in transmitting a loner's variegated inscape, hewing to his codes of honor and living by liquidation of mortals, but it doesn't necessarily negate that he can have a warm soul underneath, and truly, the warmth quotient increases whenever there is a scene between him and Isaach De Bankolé's motormouth Raymond, the latter is the bees knee for a sore eye, amusingly and edifyingly, Jarmusch points up that human beings can build a communicative bond in spite of a seemingly insurmountable language barrier, and it is this humanistic perspective gives the film an edge over its built-in romanticism of indiscriminately adhering to something exotic and gnomic, so at large, GHOST DOG is worth cherry-picking by both Jarmusch newbies and diehards.

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

1999

Action / Crime / Drama / Thriller

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

1999

Action / Crime / Drama / Thriller

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Movie Reviews

The eponymous protagonist of Jim Jarmusch's 1999 film

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)

worth cherry-picking by Jarmusch newbies and diehards alike

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