Confession: Last time when I said that I was "very, very excited" to watch Branded to Kill, it was because it's a 1960's Japanese film, and the Criterion Collection has yet to do me wrong with their Japanese cinema selections. Unlike French cinema, where I've watched probably as many duds as classics, Japan really has yet to do me wrong. Therefore, as ignorant as it may seem, I went in assuming that I would dig this film based solely on its country of origin. Surprise surprise, turns out I was right to be excited.
The best thing a film can do is completely catch me off guard and show me something that I wasn't expecting, especially in a genre film. For instance, something like Hausu is sold as a haunted house story, but when you watch it your senses are completely bombarded with over-the-top visual and stimuli that it's difficult to define it as a horror film. A friend compared it to a feature-length TV ad, and that seems like a great comparison to me. With Branded to Kill, I popped this in expecting a standard yakuza story, with maybe some badass machismo bullshit, slick killers with cool shades, and visuals that I'll probably recognized as being stolen wholesale by Quentin Tarantino. What I wasn't expecting was a bonkers, surrealist nightmare that feels more like an episode of The Prisoner than Reservoir Dogs.
The story involves a hitman named Goro who is tasked with an impossible assassination by a femme fatale named Misako. He fails and is then hunted by Number One and his henchmen. On this simple framework director Seijun Suzuki hangs bizarre scenes of Goro hunched over a pot huffing rice because he has a fetish for it, Misako's apartment filled with dead butterflies, weird scenes of Number One locked arm in arm with Goro and having a "gentleman's agreement" over how he's going to kill him, and close up scenes of bullet wounds, fake eyeballs being popped out, and mashed insect guts. Oh, and a bunch of nudity.
There is so much in this movie that's surprising and defies description that it really must be seen for itself. The gangster aspect of the film, while important, is really just there to see how far Suzuki can deviate from it's tropes and throw something unexpected at you. At one moment you're seeing a standard contract killing, and the next you're getting animated butterflies tormenting the psyche of our hero. You'll get a standard sex scene, and then you'll see Goro sniffing rice and appearing on the verge of an orgasm. Aside from the general weirdness of this film, it's also fantastically shot, with great camerawork and fast-paced editing to keep things moving along at a clip. At a mere 98 minutes it feels much shorter than its runtime, just because there's so much stuff going on and you're hit with something unique every few minutes or so. I can't say I've seen anything quite like this before.
Despite the lurid poster and raciness of the film (including one of the most blatant panty shots I've seen outside of The Breakfast Club), this is one of the best over-the-top insane films I've seen. I can only really compare it to Hausu, even though it's not nearly THAT crazy. It's more of a toned-down Hausu with gangsters and a Prisoner edge, with less screechy schoolgirls. I typically love these kinds of films, but I need to be careful with how I rank this one. Just because I love it now doesn't mean it's going to hold up to another few viewings. As I look at the list I'm finding that the border on this one is between Walkabout and Les Diaboliques. Walkabout is just a better film overall, but Les Diaboliques, despite how much I like it, never got me pumped the way this film did. Therefore, I feel good putting this at #17.
The list
Next time: Now I'm even more excited to dive into Suzuki's film Tokyo Drifter. Bring it!
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