|  | | | Customer Reviews: | | | Average Customer Review:
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Filmmaking with a touch of demented genius! Apr 15, 2009
Branded to Kill('67) was way ahead of its time. Watching this movie once is simply not enough.
After being handed a basic cardboard script about a contract killer, Director Seijun Suzuki shattered all expectations of studio conformity. He presented an outrageous little yakuza film that shocked and enraged the powers that be. This blatant deviation from the typical routine got him promptly fired and blackballed in the industry for a decade.
Meet Goro Hanada, an expert assassin-for-hire. He's currently ranked #3 killer in the land, and he's quite an odd cat--a chubby cheeks sex maniac with a penchant for sniffing rice? Not quite what you'd expect. He accepts different missions as he aspires for that #1 ranking.
This film is very much a parody of the yakuza genre. The story moves fast and jumps quite a bit with a high level of surrealism and absurdity. It's crazy fun, but a bit hard to follow with your first watch.
There are several insane moments that will leave you shaking your head. Like when one of his targets gets a bullet hole in his head while washing his hands over the sink. Where'd the bullet come from?!? You later see Hanada screwing the pipe back together that leads up to the sink drain. Haha, that's a heck of a shot!
The story is continually a sporadic jumble of combustible madness, ready to explode at any moment. Brimming from beginning to end with crazy gun fights, comical buffonery, and wild sex scenes, this is a ground-breaking dose of madness that is well deserving of the Criterion treatment. Branded to Kill had a heavy influence on several filmmakers, including John Woo and Quentin Tarantino.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
It just goes to show you... Feb 27, 2009
...the industry is really stupid sometimes. When this movie was first released it was released under the heat of controversy. The films director, Seijun Suzuki, was fired from the film for veering too far from the original script. His direction was deemed too extreme by the studio and he was basically blackballed from the industry for the better part of a decade. The funny thing is that it is his sublimely toxic direction that actually makes this film work so well. So, like I said; the industry is really stupid sometimes.
Years later `Koroshi no Rakuin' has become a cult classic, a film well regarded and lauded by many a cinephile. The reasons for this are obvious. The chaotic and infectious direction feels like a sick mixture of Darren Aronofsky and Martin Scorsese. The script is brilliantly constructed (conceptually it may be `cookie cutter' as some have accused it of being, but visually it is anything but). The acting is hit or miss, but the important aspects of the film are realized with sheer perfection and brutal imagination.
The film, in a nutshell, is fearless.
Goro is Japan's #3 Killer, and he loves what he does. He has very strange behavioral issues, not the least of which is his insatiable list for the smell of boiling rice. He has two equally `off-kilter' women in his life; his erotic wife and his butterfly obsessed mistress. When Goro botches a job he finds himself on the other end of the scope, fighting for survival against the #1 Killer who has been hired by the Mob to `off' Goro. What comes next is intense, dark and dazzling all at the same time.
As far as the acting is concerned, Jo Shishido is the only one who really commands his role; which is important since he is in practically every frame. Mariko Ogawa is borderline annoying with her over-the-top portrayal of Goro's wife, but I think that is the style with these Asian films so I won't fault her too much. Mari Annu is much more appealing and interesting in her role, in my opinion. The real star performer here is Suzuki though. He slays each scene with these intense bursts of testosterone that captivate and stimulate. There is not a single scene that doesn't grip you in one way or another. He is so good behind that camera that his eventual out-casting becomes all the more frustrating.
Today he would be bombarded with fans; easy.
I do have minor issues with the film. It did take me a little while to understand just what all was going on at first. Some of the plot points don't seem as connected as they could; and this may be where the direction got in the way of the story. It's few and far in between, but there will be moments where you may be scratching your head and taking double takes. Case-in-point is the beginning of the end, when the #1 and #3 Killers are shacked up in the same apartment. It took me a bit to understand just what was going on (and part of me isn't entirely sure I got it completely). Regardless though, this is a must see. It is artistically brilliant and conceptually fresh. Indulge in this finely crafted guilty pleasure.
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 OUTSTANDING FILM!!! Aug 31, 2008
This is one cool film. If you haven't seen this get it. I adore this from start to finish. Classy and my God was it ahead of itself. This is filmmaking at it's best.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
A directorial backlash becomes a cult classic Dec 23, 2007
Branded to kill and other Suzuki films like 'Tokyo Drifter' and the beautiful 'youth of the beast'.. will remain sort of cult classics in the genre of Japanese gangster pictures.. Not really because of their plots or even the quality of the acting.. the reason they will be remembered is because of suzuki's refusal to make the typical action picture but instead made some conciously outrageous yet finely constructed and above all stylistically flamboyant films...Branded to kill was the icing on the cake and was probably a step too far for the studio to handle.. A beautiful black and white cinematography brings to life these characters and highlights a difficult yet simple plot that sometimes purposefully leaves us baffled.. But by the end we feel like we have watched something greater than we may have first guessed.. and it is this playfulness of the director which will make this film shine for years to come... Highly influential (and also highly influenced by other genres)Branded to kill stands as a work of art and a powerful example of free will...
2 of 3 found the following review helpful:
A monochrome dream Oct 18, 2006
Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima cranked up the concept of reality T.V a few notches in 1970 when he invited a few of his media pals along to a hijacking of a government building where he then performed seppuku (Ritual self disembowelling) as a protest against the erosion of traditional Japanese values. Japan in the late 60's saw an upsurge of such demonstrations against western influence - an uprising which had seen riots outside the Budokan Sports Arena a few years previously when the Beatles appeared there. Somewhere during this volatile chapter of cultural osmosis director Seijun Suzuki got fired by the Nikkitsu film company for making his masterpiece BRANDED TO KILL.
This maverick film maker was already on thin ice with his fiercely conservative paymasters when his 1966 film TOKYO DRIFTER took the Yakuza (Japanese gangster) genre into new (and thus feared) directions but BRANDED TO KILL was the one that finally broke the chopstick - Rendering the director unemployable for a decade.
BRANDED TO KILL charts the fall and fall of No3 Killer, (Jo Shishido) a down at heel hitman, who bodges an assignment when a butterfly lands on the end of his rifle just at the crucial moment. For this gaff he is now subject to the murderous attentions of the mythical No1 Killer.
Looking like a giant Gopher in a mohair suit and Raybans, No3 Killer finds himself in a bizarre vortex of shadows and monochrome as he attempts to save his girlfriend from being incinerated, get the better of superior Killer No1 and to survive to become No1 himself. His bizarre quirk of using boiled rice as a form of Viagra does nothing to make his journey anymore straightforward.
Surely one of the most beautiful black and white films ever, BRANDED TO KILL is a collision of American `Noir' and giddy Japanese oddness. A genuine cinematic experience - everything within the frame appears to be sculptured from mercury.
Cultural Osmosis is rarely an easy thing, but when it works, the result is often something like the offbeat gorgeousness of BRANDED TO KILL.
|
| |
|
![Up (4 Disc Combo Pack with Digital Copy and DVD) [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51V%2Beipy8-L._SL75_.jpg "Up (4 Disc Combo Pack with Digital Copy and DVD) [Blu-ray]")
![Across the Universe [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51T24FuHPEL._SL75_.jpg "Across the Universe [Blu-ray]")
![Underworld Trilogy (Underworld / Underworld: Evolution / Underworld: Rise of the Lycans) [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51F27VzUl%2BL._SL75_.jpg "Underworld Trilogy (Underworld / Underworld: Evolution / Underworld: Rise of the Lycans) [Blu-ray]")
![Shakira: Oral Fixation Tour [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51RQUEopdlL._SL75_.jpg "Shakira: Oral Fixation Tour [Blu-ray]")
