Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

viewed April 4, 2000 at the Landmark Bridge

For full information about this film, click here

Ghost Dog is a fascinating movie in many respects, frustrating in others, but even those frustrations are fascinating.  It's a movie that plays with various film and cultural stereotypes -- samurai, gangster, gangsta, hitman -- and reconfigures them in ways that are a lot of fun albeit limited to their collective definitions.  Jim Jarmusch knows his genres well -- it's just a shame he doesn't know much beyond them, but you can't hold it against him for being what he isn't.  His characters are so familiar that when they do the unexpected (an elderly gangster starts breaking into rap), it's a great delight.  

Aside from genres, the other thing that Jarmusch has mastered is the unpolished film.  Ghost Dog has a roughness that is ultimately unsatisfying, especially the generic ending, and the development of the plot is out of sequence, but it is more provocative than narratives that lead you step-by-step through their storyline.  In fact, the things that make no sense are what are best about the film, such as Ghost Dog's inscrutable manner and his ability to understand an Haitian ice cream peddler who only speaks French.

The centerpiece of the film is Forrest Whitaker, who gives a beautiful performance, full of poetry and campy seriousness.  His contribution is matched by a mesmerizing, Zen-like hip-hop soundtrack by The Rza.  

Jonathan Rosenbaum has a well-studied review of Ghost Dog, but somewhere in the middle he seems to make it into more than what it is.

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