Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

Directed by Jim Jarmusch, GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI is about an inner-city black man named Ghost Dog who lives his life by the way of the samurai. He lives on top of a building with a horde of carrier pigeons, works as a hit-man for the mob who demands pay on the first day of autumn, and only communicates with these employers via the pigeons. Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker) only talks to a little girl at the park, and a Haitian ice cream man with whom he cannot communicate. The separation between cultures though, is seemingly transcended by fate. Ghost Dog, for instance, follows an ancient method that no longer really exists. His Italian mafia employers, according to Ghost Dog, follow a similarly dying way. Disenfranchised by the world, apparently, Ghost Dog follows this way anyway. There's this weirdness to the entire film, and really, for me, it didn't chock up to a single narrative, but to a series of very good or very interesting and well thought out ideas. In one scene for instance, the gangster who employs Ghost Dog has to explain the oddities of his hit-man to the boss. "What kind of name is that?" says one of the gangsters. "They all got names like that, comes from rappers," says one of the others, before mentioning him as some nigger, and then following that by quoting some Flavor Flav line. But at the heart of GHOST DOG is a lot of conflicting culture and history, sprinkled with acts of violence in the middle.

★★★★ out of Five