ti: Branded to Kill – Japanese film

Branded to Kill, also known as Koroshi no rakuin is truly a masterpiece which propelled the Japanese film society into a new modern era. Branded to Kill was released in 1967 by the Nikkatsu Company. Suzuki Seijun, one of Japan’s most prominent and respected directors, took the newly inspired American style film techniques and turned it into something of his own. The fresh new dynamic camera angles and integrated action shots gave Branded to Kill an edgy new perspective in the yakuza genre of films. The cast is composed of a few main characters including Shishido Joe, Nanbara Koji, Mari Anne and Ogawa Mariko.

Our main character, Hanada Goro, also referred as the number three assassin in Japan gave a comical and animated performance in being a stonecold killer, yet with a unique comical twist. His awkward pleasure in smelling boiled rice gave an original perspective into the twisted life of a contracted killer. We follow our kinky assassin in several missions, of which one consisted of being a transporter. Romance also appeared in the film where Hanada falls in love with an even more mysterious female assassin by the name of Misako. A perfect balance between violence and love gave the film an intricate comparison between full-out violence and the personal life of such dramatic characters.

Some of the most interesting scenes that caught my attention were built around the action. The semi-fantasy feel of an invincible sharp shooter was portrayed with surreal accuracy and the over-exaggeration of the bullet impact. In various scenes, we have Hanada shooting away at foes far away, usually on top of some sort of building. Upon being shot, the character somehow gets entangled on a piece of rope, thus hanging lifeless. There was also usage of the “film within a film” technique where Hanada’s newfound love Misako is held hostage and tortured until her evident death.

Suzuki enjoyed original ideas as Hanada uses unusual ways of killings his targets. In one particular scene, Hanada assassinates his victim by firing his pistol up a water pipe, resulting in planting the bullet into his head. There are also several other clever assassinations that are definitely out of the ordinary.

Suzuki Seijun created such wide variety of visual stunts as well as unrealistic portrayals of death which was interesting to watch. His brilliance was credited to his use of camera angles and a sort of freestyle shooting. He practically used all the types of shots available for this film, and they all came together in brilliant sequences. Although Branded to Kill was a small-budget film, the expertise on such original camerawork made the movie flawless and certainly not cheap. If I was to compare this film to a modern day style, Quentin Tarantino’s twisted and over-exaggerated style suits Suzuki’s animated action scenes. The fluidity of action and the flashbacks and hallucinations are indeed familiar in some of Tarantino’s films. In essence, Suzuki’s genre is most likely directly influencing some of Tarantino’s work such as Kill Bill and Sin City. Branded to Kill is definitely recommended to those who appreciate the genre of gangster films without significant amount of blood and gore. As a fan of violence-based movies, it still satisfies the craving for action, but the unorthodox music and comical aspects soften the realism of the brutal killings. The cleverly composed characters and the general mood of the film achieve comical relief and the occasional suspense from time to time. The film does include various scenes of intense sexual content, as it is part of the Nikkatsu Company films.

Branded to Kill (Koroshi no rakuin), directed by Suzuki Seijun in 1967 under the Nikkatsu Corporation, is not your typical yakuza film. Meshing the extreme violence of action cinema, the drama of crime cinema, and the creativity of experimental art cinema, Suzuki creates a truly unique film experience worthy of any filmgoer’s respect.

The film follows Hanada Goro, a likeable but ruthless rice-sniffing hitman played by Joe Shishido, as he carries out several assassination jobs under his boss Yabuhara Michihiko (Tamagawa Isao). As the film progresses, we see the toll the cutthroat assassin lifestyle takes on Hanada’s mental stability and his relationship with his wife Mami (Mariko Ogawa). The importance of status in Hanada’s world results in his increasingly obsessive desire to move up the ranks as a hitman, becoming the source of his downfall and that of the people close to him.

The film begins with Hanada as the “No. 3 killer” who is given a prestigious job by Yabuhara to escort a high-profile client to Nagano. Despite his drunken partner and two ambushes by the fourth- and second-ranked hitmen, Hanada completes his task and kills No. 2 in the process, taking the rank for himself. On his way home, his car breaks down, and he meets a troubled, beautiful young girl named Misako (Mari Anne) who drives him home. Hanada later accepts Misako’s request to kill someone for her but fails in the process. Now on the run from Yabuhara, for whom failure is punishable by death, Hanada becomes entrenched in a confused and hectic state as he falls in love with Misako, kills his wife for cheating on him with Yabuhara himself, and becomes thoroughly obsessed with increasing his hitman status rather than losing it.

By the end of the film Hanada has caused harm to everyone around him due to his mental instability, and we are left with one major event: a final test from No. 1 (Koji Nanbara) where he and Hanada fight to determine who is the best hit man in an epic battle, an ending that stands tall beside cinema’s most decorated action-film showdowns.

One aspect that greatly enhances this film’s attractive narrative is Suzuki’s artistic use of extreme lighting; or rather, his masterful use of shadows. On numerous occasions Suzuki keeps the entire shot in darkness, artistically revealing small pockets of light in strange shapes, just enough for the viewer to understand what occurs in the scene. For instance, in the final sequence during Hanada’s battle with No. 1, we can barely see Hanada as he stumbles across a beautifully-dark boxing ring, where our only visual reference points are the shimmering reflections on his skin and the ring ropes. In another shot, we see a confused and drunk Hanada sliding across a large wall after killing his wife, on which strategic lighting illuminates a strange triangular shape. Hanada passes through this shape, moving back into the jet-black shadows that envelope the frame. One other striking example is when we see Mami after she is caught red-handed by Hanada at Yabuhara’s house. After Mami comes face to face with Hanada we see her terrified eyes placed beautifully within a rectangle of light, while the rest of her head and body is immersed in subtle shadows. Suzuki gives the impression of watching Mami through a window shade, where her full emotional state is brought to the surface by directing our attention explicitly towards her all-telling eyes.

Here a second truly unique aspect of Branded to Kill is revealed. Not only do these striking lighting techniques give the film a very artistic and experimental feel, they have deep thematic significance as well. The extreme contrast between overwhelming darkness and sharp pockets of light in his shots visually symbolizes Hanada’s downfall into the darkness of the hit man lifestyle, as the light in his life is being slowly extinguished by his excessive greed for higher status.

Indeed, numerous dark themes run deep in this film. Suzuki delves into the harsh effects of money, power and status, corruption, obsession, and even touches on a mysterious fascination with death. By doing so, Suzuki attempts to examine some of mankind’s worst vices, and more specifically, the Japanese culture itself. His focus on status is certainly a very “Japanese” issue, one that runs deep in much of Japanese cinema and culture, exemplified by the class struggles between characters in films such as Sisters of the Gion (Mizoguchi Kenji, 1936) or I Was Born But…(Ozu Yasujiro, 1932). Will Hanada, representing the Japanese culture itself, be able to “see the light” and escape the social and personal effects of obsessing over status? Will love prevail over personal success? These are the types of intriguing cultural questions that Suzuki brings up in Branded to Kill, resulting in its impressively relevant thematic depth.

As a warning, this film contains explicit nudity and gun violence. However, these elements are used tastefully and are necessary for Suzuki to convey Hanada’s fast-paced and dangerous hit man lifestyle. A masterful combination of self-reflexive themes, influential artistic expression, and a unique and appealing storyline gives us reason to classify Branded to Kill as a highcaliber work of cinema. Certainly, once Suzuki’s marvelous use of lighting and Hanada’s intriguingly dark narrative downfall ensues, the film’s glory cannot be denied. Thus, I feel that this film is a turning point for yakuza cinema, and gangster films in general, where artistic creativity and deep themes are not squandered by the need to entertain the audience. Rather, these elements work together in harmony. I highly recommend Branded to Kill, for its ability to thoroughly entertain, while also making us think about the disastrous societal and personal effects of money, greed, and power, long after we have popped the DVD out of the television.