Ghost Dog - The Way of the Samurai
Jim Jarmusch
USA/Japan/France/Germany, 1999, 115 mins
Review by Gerald Houghton (2000)
The bear-like Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker) performs hits for New York Mob. Profoundly private, he negotiates through one man, the slobbish Louie (a terrific John Tormey), and then only via carrier pigeon. In his shack-cum-birdhouse perched high above the city, the contract-killer, much to Louie's consternation, rigorously practices the ancient samurai code, valuing loyalty and effortless technique above human contact. But then something goes awry. Ghost Dog is witnessed by the capo's spaced-out daughter (Tricia Vessey) and the order comes down that the black hitman must pay with his life.
Jarmusch's by turns hilarious and moodily moving picture (his best since Mystery Train) is driven by some unlikely conceits. If the Mob elements are initially straight out of TV's The Sopranos, then Jarmusch has a wonderful time twisting them just enough out of true. Like the skeletal Henry Silva as monosyllabic godfather Vargo, or Cliff Gorman's Sonny, an aging white henchman much given to quoting black rappers. Mobsters, it also appears, only ever watch cartoons on TV. Most of the film's unforced comedy originates either here or with ice cream man Raymond (Isaach DeBankolé), Ghost Dog's only friend, although neither can speak the other's language.
But, as with his earlier 'western' Dead Man, Jarmusch values philosophical cool as much as flippancy, and carefully loads his work according. The great Robby Müller is back behind the camera, balancing the gritty streets and Ghost Dog's more rarified spiritualism with dexterity. The killer's numerous city travelogues in pilfered top of the range automobiles take on an hypnotic quality, backed by The RZA's equally narcotic trip-hop score. There are the carefully placed homages to the likes Melville's gallic killer classic Le Samouraï, High Noon, and even Eastwood's Bird. The tone is by turns spry, melancholic, even occasionally sweet.
It is, though, for a film that handles its exciting gun-play with such decorous ease, surprisingly in love with books. The picture is punctuated by Ghost Dog's Zen-like readings of the samurai code from the Hagakure of Tsunetomo Yamamoto. Then there's the paperback of Rashomon unostentatiously passed between key players, including Pearline (Camille Winbush), the little black bookworm who eventually befriends the soulful Ghost Dog in the park. The film suggests that she is perhaps poised carry on his work.
Where the film really scores, though, is in its ineffable inscrutability. It never offers explanations - we have only the briefest suggestion of Ghost Dog's past - and never tells us more than we need know. Perhaps it's in that that it most seizes the baton from Melville in seeming defiance of stock Hollywood convention. Never explain and never apologize. Always treat serious matters lightly and trivial matters seriously, Ghost Dog tells us - Jim Jarmusch's cinematic raison d'être in a nutshell.