Things I Watched: Branded To Kill - A Subversive Mash-Up of Avant-Garde Pretension, Absurdist Logic and Yakuza Violence

If you were a Japanese studio president who'd just watched a film about a hitman with a sexual obsession for boiled rice, would you call it ‘incomprehensible’ and proceed to fire its director? If you said yes then you might want to check your passport because you could infact be Kyusaku Hori, former head of Nikkatsu, who did this to Seijun Suzuki following the release of Branded To Kill.

The plot follows ace gun-shot Goro Haneda, the number three ranked hitman in Japan. One day a butterfly flies in front of his rifle making him miss one of his prime targets. It causes a descent into personal turmoil, inviting rival assassins to emerge from the darkness to put poor Goro out of his misery.

The film isn't best described, it's best experienced. It features themes including sexual attraction for the smell of boiled rice; a masochistic femme fatale with an obsession for butterflies; a neurotic rival figure who invites himself to live with Goro; lots of jazzy music; and multiple breaks to the 180-degree rule with a whole loads of jump-cuts to boot.

In Japan, they describe films like Branded To Kill as 'mukokuseki'. This loosely translates into a film with no cultural origin. It's true because it's basically a french new wave movie crossed with hard-boiled american noir. It result is a highly ambitious gangster film with a lot of eclectic charm and fortunately I'm a total sucker for that.

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