GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI (1999) Reviewed on May 14th, 2001 By Jerry Saravia
It pains me to write off Jim Jarmusch's "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai" as half-baked, but it truly is. It is also a half-cooked and undernourished tale of a cold-blooded hit man with little or no sense of individuality.
Ghost Dog is the name of the hit man (Forest Whitaker), a lone wolf in an urban wasteland who performs hits for the mob. Basically, Ghost Dog is the retainer but he carries no phone and seems to have no mailing address. His only contact in the outside world is through a pigeon carrier that sends notes back and forth to his "master." You see Ghost Dog was once saved by this mob affiliate, referred to as the master, and now he has paid him back his respect by killing people for a living. Ghost Dog also avidly reads the ways of the Samurai, figuring his sense of loyalty and his brand of violence stems from it. He couldn't be more wrong as both are tested to the limit when a hit goes awry and now the mob want to kill the elusive, enigmatic hit man.
"Ghost Dog" tries to be a fusion of hip-hop and gangster cliches coupled with Jarmusch's own brand of poetry, mixing in the urban wasteland of the titled character with the sense of grace and freedom, as witnessed by several shots of birds above tenements. There are many scenes of beauty and grace and all are succintly photographed by Robby Muller (who also shot the beautiful black-and-white "Dead Man," also directed by Jarmusch). Jarmusch, however, is not a stickler for narrative consistency and fails to bring any inner life to the crucial character of Ghost Dog.
How are we suppose to view this man? As played with panache and glum looks by Forest Whitaker (who also played a similar character in "Diary of a Hitman"), Ghost Dog is the classic Man With No Name character with no real background or real sense of individuality. He seems to bond with the local French ice-cream truck vendor and with a young girl who likes to read books such as "Frankenstein," but essentially, this man has no friends and no family. All he has are his nest of pigeons and his loyalty to the so-called master whom he hardly sees much of. In an ironic twist, Ghost Dog gets paid only once a year and always during the first day of autumn as part of his contract by the master. Rarely do we get a glimpse of any humanity in the character - as played by Whitaker, he is a hooded hulk bereft of emotion or purpose other than to kill. He may lack individuality and truly has erroneous views on what being a samurai is next to being a cold-blooded hit man, but coldness and detac! hment seem central to the charac ter. I simply felt nothing, not even pity, for this remorseless man. Why did he choose to lead such a life?
The film has some virtues, such as the casting of Cliff Gorman as the second-in-command of the mob who has trouble keeping up the rent for a Chinese restaurant backroom. I also enjoyed the scenes where Whitaker bonds with the French-speaking ice-cream truck vendor whom he never understands yet reiterates exactly what the other says. The violence is strong and brief, and there is a fine moment where a drainpipe is used as an unusual method of shooting someone (a moment lifted from Godard's "A Band Apart"). I also enjoyed seeing the exhausted gangsters trying to find the hit man, going from one tenement to another and coming up empty. It is also nice to see Jarmusch leaving his main character mute for the first forty-five minutes, thus allowing us to watch a man who is coming apart at the seams through Whitaker's expressive, haunting face. Unfortunately, just when a glimmer of hope appears at the end, we are still left with the same glum Ghost Dog we started with.
For more reviews, go to JERRY AT THE MOVIES at http://moviething.com/members/movies/faust/JATMindex.shtml
E-mail me with any questions, comments or general complaints at Faust668@aol.com or at faustus_08520@yahoo.com
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