Ghost Dog - The Way of the Samurai
by Jim Jarmusch
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Cliff Gorman, Dennis Liu, Forest Whitaker, Henry Silva, John TormeyDirector: Jim Jarmusch
Brand: Lions Gate
Cinematographer: Robby M?ller
Producer: Jim Jarmusch
Writer: Jim Jarmusch
Editor: Jay Rabinowitz
Producer: Diana Schmidt
Producer: Richard Guay
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 116 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-08-14
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Lions Gate
Movie Reviews of Ghost Dog - The Way of the Samurai
Movie Review: Ancient tribes and their rites
Summary: 5 Stars
When a movie maker is as controversial as Jarmusch, one has to take sides. Or ignore him, as I did for a long time. Now not any longer, after watching a few of his very special gems.
Ghost Dog, in summary, sounds like a standard action or mob film. The title hero, Whitaker, is a black hit man in New York, working for the mob with a special personal bond of loyalty to one the mobsters, not the top guy. He gets entangled in a complicated farce of an honor issue of the senile and ridiculous gangsters that dominate the film. The top mobster, a ghost- like Henry Silva, decides that the hitman must be killed.
Ghost Dog has self-styled himself as a samurai, and he follows the code as he sees it from a book that he reads on his roof, where lives with his carrier pigeons. He fights back with restraints of loyalty.
Those who take the film as a normal action film will be disappointed. It is an absurd farce on the genre, with great dialogues and cinematography. It is packed with cinema allusions, some explicit like the High Noon show down at the end, many others less blatant. Great fun.
Summary of Ghost Dog - The Way of the Samurai
Studio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 11/02/2001 Run time: 116 minutes Rating: RForest Whitaker makes an unlikely modern samurai with his laser-sighted pistols, shabby street clothes, and oddly graceful gait--but then Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai is an unusual film. Quirky, contemplative, and at times absurd, it's just the kind offbeat vision we've come to expect from the fiercely independent Jim Jarmusch (Stranger than Paradise, Dead Man). Whitaker is Ghost Dog, a mysterious New York hit man who lives simply on a tenement rooftop and follows a code of behavior outlined in Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai (passages of this book are interspersed throughout the film). When the local mob marks him for death in a complicated code of Mafiosi-style honor, Ghost Dog sends a cryptic message to his foes. "That's poetry. The poetry of war," remarks mobster Henry Silva, with sudden respect upon reading the verse. He could be describing the ethereal beauty of Jarmusch's vision, full of wonderful imagery (a night drive across town seems to float in time) and off-center humor. Though it briefly stalls in a series of assassinations (Jarmusch is no action director), it settles back into character-driven drama in a quietly epic showdown, equal parts samurai adventure, spaghetti western, and existential crime movie. The film is likely too unconventional and offbeat for general audiences, but cult-movie buffs and Jarmusch fans will appreciate his idiosyncratic vision. He finds a strange sense of honor in the clash of Old World traditions, and salutes his heroes with a skewed but sincere respect. --Sean Axmaker
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