Branded to Kill

Director: Seijun Suzuki (Japan). Year of Release: 1967

Gorodo Hanada is Japan’s third best hitman (there are people out there who have a chart for that sort of thing). Well he was, but he’s just messed up a job, which might cause him to fall down the ranks. Then again, as he kills hitmen numbers 2 and 4 early on, maybe he rises. There is a lot of killing in the 90 minutes of Branded to Kill, so any statistics may not still be valid by the end of the movie

Hanada and his wife are asked to meet his boss. His wife orders a double scotch, Hanada a plate of boiled rice. When the rice appears he doesn’t eat it but sniff it. After things do not go according to plan, Hanada becomes a target for his own organisation and goes on the run with Misako, a suicidal woman with a butterfly fixation. It is about this time, that any sense of logic flees from the film.

Branded to Kill may be accused of being all style and no substance, except that an awful lot is going on here, even if little of it makes much sense, For a start there is a lot of shooting and being shot at, a couple of romantic subplots, and some things which are just plain weird. You can attempt to concentrate hard and follow exactly what is going on. Or, you can do what I did and sit back and let it all wash over you.

At one stage, Hanada is forced to share a room with hitman #1, and the have to negotiate their sleeping and toilet routines so that neither is shot by the other one. If this results in you pissing down your leg into your smartly tailored shoe, then so be it. When the postie knocks on the door, they both go to the door, handcuffed together, to receive the package. The film ends with a shoot-out in a boxing ring, because … well, why not?

Promoting style over substance is not necessarily a bad thing. The monochromatic scenery looks just fantastic. Everything is in shadow, and pretty much any scene selected at random would produce a beautiful black and white photograph. Who needs to understand what is going on, when you can just gaze at something as beautiful as this? There is also a fantastic soundtrack which mixes jazz with God knows what else.

This is a film which is almost impossible to summarize, so I don’t think I’ll bother to say any more. Apparently director Seijun Suzuki was not allowed to make any more films for a decade after this because the film was so opaque and difficult to understand. To which you could answer, “well yes, but isn’t that the point of it?” Another alleged reason for the sacking is that the film failed to make any revenue, and if that sort of thing is important to you, you can see why.

As I do, after watching the film, I read several reviews to try and understand what other people made of it. I don’t think I read a single one that helped me any. The main problem was that they all took Branded to Kill too seriously – they tried to make sense of what they had seen. Maybe I’m a superficial idiot, but these reviews just drained any fun out of the film. It makes no sense – just live with that and enjoy it for what it is.