Ha ha, yo yo, it’s Burl here! Yeah, here to review a Jim
Jarmusch picture from the late 1990s! Yeah, yeah! It’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai! And as you may recall from my
review of his most recent effort, Only Lovers Left Alive, I have a history of seeing Jarmusch pictures in slightly
extraordinary circumstances!
I saw Ghost Dog at
a film festival, at what must have been one of the premiere screenings in North
America! My man Jim was there, and he’d brought along none other than Henry
Silva, whom we know from such pictures as Alligator
and Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold! Silva came on stage and mugged like crazy, ha ha! I think there were
a couple of other actors there as well, and maybe The RZA, who did the score
for the picture! Ha ha, I can’t quite remember! Anyway, it was a nice event,
and Jarmusch and his actors were all clearly pretty excited to unveil the movie
to an audience!
Forest “The Last Stand”
Whitaker stars as Ghost Dog, a mysterious hit man who takes out hoods at the
behest of other hoods, and follows a bushido code, and lives a monastic life on
top of a tenement, and not incidentally keeps pigeons! He has an ice cream man
friend with whom he chats daily despite the two not understanding one another’s
language, and he also befriends and makes reading recommendations to a
precocious young girl in the neighborhood!
Due to an escalating series of misunderstandings, this
taciturn hoodrat also battles the mob! Ha ha, it’s pretty amusing to watch
Ghost Dog take his vengeance using such techniques as shooting up through the
drain of a bathroom sink! Then he invades their country home and does a real
number on those goodfellas!
There’s a solid cast featuring a great gallery of gangster
faces! This bunch of mutts includes Victor Argo of Mean Streets, Richard “Barton
Fink” Portnow, Cliff “Angel”
Gorman and John “Curse of the Jade
Scorpion” Tomey! There are also appearances by Gary Farmer from Demon Knight and Isaach de Bankolé from The Skeleton Key (he plays the ice cream
man), so that’s nice, ha ha!
I can’t say I thought as much of the movie this time around
as I did after that initial festival screening! (That’s often the way with
festivals!) It’s still an enjoyable picture, but not in the top echelon of
Jarmusch pictures as far as ol’ Burl is concerned! I still much prefer Dead Man and Down By Law, for example! Outside the festival bubble and the 90s
indie atmosphere which spawned it, Ghost
Dog often seems too mannered and silly! But it is also frequently funny and
consistently entertaining, and Jarmusch does provide the genre goods, so you
can’t fault it overmuch! Plus it’s got some terrific cinematography from the
reliable Robby “Repo Man” Müller!
Just about any Jarmusch picture will get a recommendation of
some degree from me, and so it is with Ghost
Dog! I’m pleased to offer this fine movie three rooftop boats!
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