Branded to Kill

Happy New Year, everyone!

Not long after midnight, I decided to watch my first movie 0f 2011. That movie was Branded to Kill, a surreal Japanese crime thriller from 1967, directed by Seijun Suzuki. And let me tell you, this movie is inSANE.

It's about a high-ranking Yakuza hitman (number 3, in fact), who gets a target on his head after botching a hit (a symbolic butterfly lands on his gun and throws off his shot). A fairly standard formula, to say the least, but the way this movie unfolds is far from standard. The hitman, for example, needs the smell of boiling rice to attain sexual arousal. He is hired by and becomes obsessed with a suicidal girl who likes to kill birds with poison needles. I think I've already said enough. I don't want to ruin anymore for you.

The budget is extremely low, and it shows, but Suzuki makes up for it with lots of style, and lots of hallucinatory weirdness. The way he shot his action sequences was ahead of his time.

According to the wikipedia entry on this movie, the director, Seijun Suzuki, turned a standard formula script into such a baffling piece of absurdist craziness that it got him blacklisted from the movie industry for a decade. I can see why. Only much later was it recognized as a masterpiece, and an influence on such directors as John Woo, Jim Jarmusch, and Quentin Tarantino. You can definitely pinpoint aspects of all those guys in the movie, but I would say it is actually most reminiscent of Jarmusch. Like I said, this is one weeeeeird movie.

So, what's the verdict? Did I probably like it? I probably did.

B+

For those who would like to check it out, Branded to Kill is available as a Criterion Collection DVD, but can be viewed much more affordably on Netflix's Watch Instantly service.

Feel free to leave comments, let me know what you think!