At Haneda Airport, Goro Hanada (Joe Shishido) and his wife Mami are picked up in a cab. The driver of the cab is Kasuga, formerly one of the top 10 killers in Japan, now a disgrace and a drunk. Kasuga implores Hanada (the No. 3 killer) to help him on a particularly important job in order to restore his shattered reputation: for five million yen, ensure the safe transportation of a prominent member of the yakuza from Nagano to Sagami Beach. Out of money at the time, Hanada accepts. A simple job, and one that should be easy for one of the best assassins in the game.
As simple as things begin, they quickly take a turn for the bizarre when Hanada meets the strange yet alluring Misako (Annu Mari). A killer must not indulge in alcohol or women, he must have no weaknesses, know neither love nor loneliness...But what happens if he does fall in love? What will it drive him to do? What happens when the No. 3 killer in Japan has to go up against No. 1, the assassin so good that no one even knows what he looks like? Nothing good for Hanada, but certainly interesting for an audience. Japanese or otherwise.
What does it take to be a pro killer? Often we hear stories about people who return from combat who are unable to cope with the trauma, how they end up in therapy, or the streets, or dead by their own hand. What about those who didn’t? What does a person do to themselves in order to kill another person? At that moment, do they cease to think of themselves as human? We humans kill animals and plants with ease because we consider them not on our level, perhaps that we are superior. In that fashion, does a killer disconnect from his humanity in order to kill, or does he in fact place himself above humans as we do deer and cows? If certain people have the ability to kill, what is about the No.1 killer that makes him No. 1? This struggle between humanity and inhumanity, particularly in the case of Goro Hanada, seems to be one of the central themes of the film. Perhaps even the main theme.
Wikipedia states that this is considered by some to be an ‘absurdist masterpiece’, and that it influenced John Woo and Jim Jarmusch. Absurd in this case doesn’t mean silly, but is rather a philosophy similar to that of Friedrich Nietzsche's nihilism. Unlike nihilism, which emphasizes the lack of any inherent meaning in life (nihilists don’t believe in anything, as Walter Sobchak so eloquently stated in The Big Lebowski), absurdism emphasizes the inability of man to find said meaning whether it actually exists or not, so there’s no point in trying to do so. The works of Albert Camus are considered absurdist fiction, for example.
So is Branded to Kill absurdist? I believe so. That’s not to say that the film is illogical, that characters do things for no reason, because you can see the basic cause-and-effect. But in a way, all we really see is the cause and effect. Why people behave the way they do, for what reason do killers kill, what those victims did that warranted killing, is never touched upon. It’s frustrating perhaps, because as an audience we naturally place ourselves within Hanada’s shoes, but Hanada quickly becomes as lost and confused as we ourselves feel. Beyond his basic carnal desire however, I don’t believe we understand Hanada either. Was Seijun’s intent in this film to make this world of yakuza and hitmen familiar yet ultimately foreign to our own, assumedly normal, perceptions? Quite possibly. It was criticized by Japanese film studios that it ‘made no money and made no sense’ after all, so that doesn’t seem to far off the mark.
Knowing that this film inspired Jim Jarmusch makes me understand him a bit better, but I still don’t care for Coffee & Cigarettes. Not enough gunfights, I guess. Check out Branded to Kill though: it’s part drama, part action, part thriller, with a soundtrack that sounds like it comes from Thelonious Monk scoring a silent movie and a place in Japanese cinema history. Plus it’s a movie that really puts you in a thinking sort of mood, if my reaction is anything to go by. And thinking about how things are and how you feel about it is good, isn’t it?
Don’t answer that, O’Brien.
Result: Recommended
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