Branded To Kill (1967)

Director: Seijun Suzuki
Country: Japan 

"Branded to Kill" is like free jazz: no rules, no conventional timing, no straight narrative and no romantic bullshit, instead it is an acid trip, or if you prefer is Melville, Buñuel, Furukawa, Godard and Andy Warhol mixed in a blender. 

Full of abstract, surrealist and artistic scenes and surprisingly pop-art images encrusted into the film, a beautiful chiaroscuro cinematography in combination with Naozumi Yamamoto incredible acid-jazz soundtrack, which provides a fastidious synchronicity that helps to maintain the energy through the entire film, this picture has been labeled as noir, but that's only part of it, because it's also a mistery-thriller with a chunk of satire and dense sex scenes that imply sadism and fetichism (snuffing the boiled rice and leg fetichism as well) and of course with a lot of action sequences too. 

Branded To Kill is starred by the magnificent and legendary actor Joe Shishido -well known for his role in "Youth Of The Beast", another Suzuki tour de force- is about a cold blooded killer who becomes the target of a Yakuza organization after failing the assasination of a foreign detective, he also becomes obsessed both with a woman (Mizuku) and with the misterious number one gunman. It has many remarkable scenes but I would like to write about the ones that fascinated me more. 

One of the most famous "eye scenes" in the history of cinema is from Luis Buñuel's "Un Chien Andalou" (1929) but in Suzuki's Branded To Kill we have a very powerful and brutal scene involving an eye too, also Suzuki created a beautiful pop-art picture in movement in this film, when Goro Hanada shoots the first of four men behind a billboard's animatronic lighter, that sequence is simply beautiful, and maybe the most ingenious one is when Hanada shoots the second guy in the face through a pipe drain (Jim Jarmush stole this one for his 1999 film "Ghost Dog") . 

Technically Suzuki used jump cuts, fade out transitions, static, handheld camera and point of view shots and in addition to the animated images he also used inverted colors in some scenes; silence is executed in a deftly way and complements the acid-jazz soundtrack .

Due to its complex, tricky and non-conventional narrative, the audience can get lost while watching the movie, but that's the beauty of it, maybe the number one never existed and Hanada gone crazy, maybe the woman he loves is actually dead or if you want to think that everything could be an hallucination feel free to do it, you can think whatever you want about the plot, the story and the ending, because Suzuki made one of the most twisted and unique movies ever; this is an absolute and crazy masterpiece that I saw twice in a row and no wonder Suzuki got fired and banned from the Japanese industry during 10 years after this!. 

If you want to know more about the production and background of this film click here to check out this film essay written by the great saxophonist John Zorn who is also a big fan of "Branded To Kill"   enjoy!