Branded to Kill [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Seijun Suzuki Seijun Suzuki

Overview

A delirious fever dream of a film, Seijun Suzuki's Branded to Kill takes the familiar elements of "B"-movie crime drama and transforms them into something outrageously bizarre and unexpectedly poetic. The film's story centers on Hanada, a.k.a. "No. 3 Killer," the third-best hit man in Japanese organized crime. Near the top of his game, his fortunes change when he encounters Misako, a mysterious, death-obsessed woman who brings him a particularly difficult mission. In a famous moment indicative of the film's eccentric sensibility, a butterfly lands on his gun's sight at the exact moment he pulls the trigger, causing him to miss the shot. This failure means that the killer becomes the target, and must run for his life from his former employers, and the mysterious "No. 1 Killer." While the film does contain some spectacular action sequences, the story is played less as a suspense thriller than as a surrealistic, psychosexual nightmare, filled with grotesque imagery and strange touches, such as Misako's use of a dead bird's corpse as a rear-view mirror decoration, and his almost fetishistic fixation with the smell of boiling rice. Indeed, the narrative is at times so fragmented that it is often difficult to decipher exactly what is happening; however, the striking black-and-white cinematography and avant-garde editing provide the film with a dream logic all its own. Now considered by many critics a maverick classic comparable to the works of Samuel Fuller or Jean-Luc Godard, the film was less well received at the time of its original release, with its utter strangeness leading to director Suzuki's firing from the Nikkatsu studio and the near destruction of his career.

Product Details

Release Date:	12/13/2011
UPC:	0715515090414
Original Release:	1967
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W, Wide Screen]
Language:	English
Time:	1:31:00
Sales rank:	10,909

Special Features

Video piece featuring new interviews with Director Seijun Suzuki and Assistant Director Masami Kuzuu; Interview with Suzuki from 1997; New interview with Actor Joe Shishido; Trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Jô Shishido	Goro Hanada,Actor
Ogawa Mariko	Mami Hanada
Mari Annu	Misako Nakajo
Tamagawa Isao	Michihiko Yabuhara
Minami Hiroshi	Gihei Kasuga
Mariko Ogawa	Mami Hanada
Annu Mari	Misako Nakajo
Koji Nanbara	Susumu Orui
Isao Tamagawa	Michihiko Yabuhara
Hiroshi Minami	Gihei Kasuga
Kosuke Hisamatsu	Jeweller
Hiroshi Oruikawa	Optometrist
Iwae Arai	Man with Artificial Eye
Hiroshi Osa	Bartender
Yu Izumi	Cook
Tokuhei Miyahara	Government Official
Shiro Tonami	Postman
Michiko Ogi	Woman in Snack Bar
Takashi Nomura	Boy
Jo Shishido	Hanada Goro/ Killer No.3
Naozumi Yamamoto	Composer

Technical Credits

Mitsutoshi Ishigami

Takeo Kimura

Seijun Suzuki	Director
Kaneo Iwai	Producer
Mitsutoshi Ishigami	Screenwriter
Takeo Kimura	Screenwriter
Mizunoe Takiko	Producer

Editorial Reviews

Like an unholy marriage of Goldfinger (1964) and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), Branded to Kill is a brilliantly weird reductio ad absurdum of the Japanese gangster flick that still manages to shock, thrill, and entertain. Director Seijun Suzuki presents a hallucinatory ultra-hip world of compulsive sex, frenzied violence, and boiling rice, held together with only the barest attention to logic or narrative coherence. Marked by Pop Art aesthetics, loopy cinematic devices, and disorienting leaps of narrative, it leaves the viewer breathless with its sheer stylistic invention. Yet Branded almost ended Suzuki's career. Executives at Nikkatsu Studios were already growing increasingly impatient with the two-fisted flamboyance of such films as Tokyo Drifter (1966) and Youth of the Beast (1963), and Branded was the straw broke the camel's back; Suzuki was promptly sacked by enraged studio heads. Now Suzuki is recognized as Japan's great cinematic maverick and Branded to Kill is considered one his finest works.

All Movie Guide - Jonathan Crow