Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
Directed by Jim Jarmusch
A Black hitman who models after the samurai of old finds himself targeted for death by the mob.
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What critics compared Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai to
Only God Forgives is in some ways reminiscent of the fashionable obsession with eastern religions, rituals and colourful social practices that some American film-makers exhibited a few years ago in films such as Paul Schrader's Mishima , Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun , Martin Scorsese's Kundun and Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai .
The first notable attention given to this social phenomenon was Jim Jarusch's 1999 Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.
The story, adapted from the novella by Jonathan Ames, has shades of The Searchers; shades of Taxi Driver; shades of Clean, Shaven; shades of even Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.
“Paterson” might be the most minimalist film Jarmusch has made, which says a lot considering he also made “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai” and “Dead Man” and “Coffee and Cigarettes.”
Jim Jarmusch has been making movies for nearly four decades now—he was one of the faces of the American independent film movement long before most people were aware that such a thing even existed—and as a fan of his work, both his oddball genre explorations such as the trippy Western “Dead Man,” the martial arts-influences “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai” and the vampire riff “Only Lovers Left Alive,” and one-of-a-kind efforts as “Down by Law,” “Night on Earth” and “Broken Flowers,” I would go so far as to declaim him as one of the most exciting and consistently interesting cinematic talents of his time.
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The pared down artistic approach worked so well in the director's films like Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai (adapted from Jean-Pierre Melville's mesmerising masterpiece Le Samouraï ), which merged form and content while generating great intrigue in Forest Whitaker's lone wolf assassin.
Jarmusch's status as a god of international indie filmmaking was cemented way back in 1984, with " Stranger Than Paradise ," and his cult only increased with pothead favorites including " Dead Man " and " Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai ."
Take Isaach de Bankolé’s immaculately suited, implacably distant nomadic operator in The Limits of Control (09) or Forest Whitaker’s character in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (99), whose singularity and composure came from the knowledge that, in keeping with Japanese warrior codes, he was “already dead.”