Product Details

• Actors: Jô Shishido, Kôji Nanbara, Isao Tamagawa, Anne Mari, Mariko Ogawa
• Directors: Seijun Suzuki
• Writers: Atsushi Yamatoya, Chűsei Sone, Hachiro Guryu, Mitsutoshi Ishigami, Takeo Kimura
• Producers: Kaneo Iwai, Takiko Mizunoe
• Format: Black & White, Color, Letterboxed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: Japanese (Dolby Digital 1.0)
• Subtitles: English
• Region: All Regions
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Criterion
• DVD Release Date: February 23, 1999
• Run Time: 91 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 078002205X
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #90,313 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "Branded to Kill (The Criterion Collection)" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Seijun Suzuki's absolutely mad yakuza movie bends the hit-man genre so out of shape it more resembles a Luis Bunuel take on Martin Scorsese. Number three killer Goro Hanada (Jo Shishido) is a hired killer who loves his work, but when he misses a target after a mere butterfly sets his carefully balanced aim astray, he becomes the next target of the mob. Goro is no pushover and easily dispatches the first comers, leaving them splayed in death contortions that could qualify for an Olympic event, but the rat-a-tat violence gives way to a surreal, sadistic game of cat and mouse. The legendary Number One mercilessly taunts his target before moving in with him in a macho, testosterone-laden Odd Couple truce that ends up with them handcuffed together. Kinky? Not compared to earlier scenes. The smell of boiling rice sets Goro's libido for his mistress so aflame that Suzuki censors the gymnastic sex with animated black bars that come to life in an animated cha-cha. Because Suzuki pushed his yakuza parodies and cinematic surrealism too far, his studio, Nikkatsu, finally called in their own metaphoric hit and fired the director with such force that he was effectively blackballed from the industry for a decade. It took about that long for audiences to embrace his audacious genre bending--Suzuki's pop-art sensibilities were just a bit ahead of their time. --Sean Axmaker

Product Description

Branded to Kill, the wildly perverse story of the yakuza's rice-sniffing "No. 3 Killer," is Seijun Suzuki at his delirious best. From a cookie-cutter studio script, Suzuki delivered this brutal, hilarious, and visually inspired masterpiece-and was promptly fired. Criterion presents the DVD premiere of Branded to Kill in a pristine transfer from the original Nikkatsu-scope master.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Butterfly Kiss September 14, 2001

By Kathy Fennessy

Format:VHS Tape

I was inspired to seek out Branded to Kill as it's one of Jim Jarmusch's favorite films, and he's one of my favorite filmmakers. You could say that his interest in Japanese pop culture first came to the fore in Mystery Train, the darkly comic tale of two Japanese tourists on a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Elvis. But it's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, which mostly clearly takes its inspiration from Seijun Suzuki's bizarre, yet strangely beautiful Branded to Kill. Certainly, the external trappings are different (Suzuki's film is in B&W, it's set in Japan, RZA most definitely did not compose the soundtrack, etc.), but the central characters are cut from the same inscrutable cloth. Arguably, Ghost Dog also takes its inspiration from another non-American noir released in '67--Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai with Alain Delon as, you guessed it, a bird-loving hitman of few words (a film that, in turn, inspired John Woo's The Killer).

Branded to Kill plays like a cross between an American noir from the 1950s (Kiss Me Deadly), a French New Wave post-noir (Breathless, Le Doulos), and a Japanese "art" film (Woman in the Dunes). At first, you think Goro (Jo Shishido) is one odd dude (with his chipmunk cheeks, weird rice obsession, insatiable libido, etc.), but then you meet the women in his life... Both of them, his wife (Mariko Ogawa) and butterfly-obsessed mistress (Mari Annu), are about as strange as it gets (so strange--and downright kinky--that accusations of misogyny would not be completely misplaced).

If you've been looking for something different, you've found it in Branded to Kill. If the plot is as incomprehensible as that of The Big Sleep, it doesn't really matter. It's all about the look and feel of the thing, best exemplified by the set pieces, which can be quite spectacular (and were constructed more out of ingenuity than cash). Recommended as much to fans of Jarmusch and Melville as to fans of Takeshi Kitano, another helmer who's mastered the art of the silent, sympathetic hitman. And you'll never look at a butterfly the same way again--or a bowl of rice, for that matter.

Trivia note: Masatoshi Nagase (Mystery Train, the Suzuki-inspired Most Terrible Time of My Life) also appears in Pistol Opera (2001), Suzuki's sequel to Branded to Kill (released when Nagase was a year old!).

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars What's It Worth? November 20, 2000

By A Customer

Format:DVD

Honestly, I was expecting a New Wave film, but what I got was a film that, stylistically, compares with the New Wave, but fails to achieve New Wave pathos. But that doesn't mean "Branded to Kill" is a bad film, it just means you have to look at it from a different perspective: The film is fluff, substance is style. It's lack of cohesion seems to be an intellectual bluff rather than a conscious, "artistic" convention. Therefore, the film should be compared to the films of Roger Corman and the Blaxploitation era.

"Branded to Kill" seems like the Asian precursor to films like "Hard Boiled" and "The Killer". BTK's action scenes are inventive and frenzied. They are not "realistic", but they fit within the film's tone, which is unrealistic anyway. Everything is over the top, and the film has that "go for broke" feeling of the New Wave. You have to admire Suzuki's moxy, which suits the era and environment in which the film was created.

In the interview on this disk, Suzuki says his films were meant to be strictly entertaining. That they are. "Branded to Kill" is one of the most entertaining films I've ever seen, besting even some of Roger Corman's films. It's both maddening and exuberant, and a great example of perverse cinema.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Butterflys, rice cookers and Chipmunk Joe make this a Japanese B-film extraordinaire.... January 2, 2012

By Dr. Morbius

Format:Blu-ray|Amazon Verified Purchase

It certainly does take a certain kind of film buff to enjoy this film. Style over substance is the order of the day, and one must be willing to sacrifice a coherent plot line for an excess of style. In this film the way a thing gets done takes precedence over the thing that is done. Don't get me wrong- the basic idea of the story is simple. however the style almost becomes the story and this is something we are not all used to. (You might want to see Kill Bill first and then Tokyo Drifter before this one). I won't go into the plot here because I think it's better if you don't have any expectations before watching this one. The black and white cinematography is superb. The sound is as good as can be expected. The extras are minimal, however it is a criterion release, so it required viewing. The only thing that could have made it better would be if Bela Lugosi were in it....