Jim Jarmusch
Ghost Dog:The Way of the Samurai

LA RECENSIONE

Among the many gangster movies made in recent years, a prominent place is certainly occupied by "Ghost Dog" by Jim Jarmusch, both for its originality and for the excellent direction, enhanced by an excellent soundtrack and the outstanding performance by Forest Whitaker.

The story revolves around the hired killer Ghost Dog, a marginalized and solitary giant of color, precise and silent, who only works for Louie, a criminal in a mafia organization composed of old gangsters. Louie is ordered to have Ghost Dog killed, who will try to survive by eliminating his enemies without, however, harming his only employer who saved his life in the past. A film about honor and respect that has as its leitmotif the vision of a void and valueless modernity (the boss's daughter, the only truly "modern" character, is practically a zombie), contrasted with the Japan of proud samurai.

Jarmusch scatters the entire work with phrases taken from the samurai code of life (a book of pearls of wisdom), breaking the film into small chapters and offering interesting points of reflection that reveal the nature and ethics of the protagonist.

Ghost Dog acts and lives like a ghost, isolated from the world, almost external to the world (the sequences in the car where he observes the city at night are beautiful, somewhat reminiscent of Taxi Driver), but he is more of a bear on the brink of extinction (the scene with the two hunters is emblematic).

An interesting film, intelligent and certainly very original, which does not try to imitate Tarantino (which is very common in post-Pulp Fiction gangster films), here the dialogues are few but all successful and there is a truly unique air of melancholy.

In a word: different.