Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

Grade: B+

Verdict: Director Jim Jarmusch puts his compellingly strange twist on the mafia genre.

Details: Starring Forest Whitaker and John Tormey. Rated R for strong violence and language. 1 hour, 54 minutes

Review: "Ancient Japan was a pretty strange place," says dead-eyed vamp Louise (Tricia Vessey) in director Jim Jarmusch's "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai." The same goes for the film's version of modern New York. After all, the emotionless Louise has just watched her lover get shot to death, and she's addressing her comment to his contract killer. She even lends him her copy of the book she's reading: "Rashomon."

The killer in question is Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker), a gun-for-hire who follows the philosophy of the samurai, especially their utter devotion to their masters. His is the man who saved him as a teenager from thugs: Louie (John Tormey), a tubby, graying soldier working for gang boss Vargo (Henry Silva). Louise is Vargo's daughter, so you could say the contract whack of her boyfriend is an ultimate expression of parental disapproval. The problem is, Louise wasn't supposed to be at the crime scene when the hit occurred. So Vargo demands that Ghost Dog pay for his mistake by being "erased from the planet."

You might say he already is. He lives at an unknown address, demands payment only once a year (the first day of autumn) and contacts Louie via carrier pigeon. Incredulous, Vargo asks, "Did you try to follow this bird? Put a bug on it?" (It bothers the wise guys more than anything to learn that Ghost Dog is black.)

What follows is a series of moves and countermoves as Ghost Dog tries to stay loyal to Louie, even as Louie's cronies try to track and kill him. It's a fairly equal match. Ghost Dog points out, "We're from different ancient tribes, and now we're both almost extinct."

With one droopy-lidded eye and the other sharp and clear, Whitaker makes a fascinating lone wolf, radiating both outward alertness and inward zen. Jarmusch places him in a pungently off-key world: Thugs stare for hours at old kiddie cartoons, a large boat rests atop a tenement roof, and a schoolgirl is busy reading both "The Wind in the Willows" and the pulp-sex paperback "Night Nurse." Jarmusch enjoys this sense of culture clash, giving Ghost Dog a best friend from French Guiana (the lively Isaach De Bankole); it hardly matters that neither of them understands the other's language. As a tired Louie exclaims, "Nothing makes any sense anymore."

As in his moody, kind-of western "Dead Man," Jarmusch takes a film genre and puts his own spin on it. His trademark restraint and deadpan minimalism are at work, but they're used to re-imagine this world of blood and vendettas in a fresh way. In this "Sopranos"-mad year, it's to his credit that he takes the overused gangster genre and makes it compellingly unfamiliar.

— Steve Murray, Cox News Service

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