The Cinematheque

“One of [Suzuki’s] greatest movies … Rivals Orson Welles’s Lady from Shanghai in its harsh eroticism and cruel humour, not to mention its visual fireworks.”

Tony Rayns

Suzuki Seijun was fired by Nikkatsu after completing this fractured film noir, cementing his reputation as a provocateur and turning him into a counterculture hero. After the dust settled on the lawsuit filed in his defense—which he won—Suzuki was blacklisted by the other major film studios for a decade. An anarchic send-up of B‑movie clichés, Branded to Kill stars Shishido Jo as an assassin who gets turned on by the smell of cooking rice, and whose failed attempt to kill a victim (a butterfly lands on his gun) turns him into a target himself. Perhaps Suzuki’s most famous film, it has been cited as an influence by filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch, Park Chanwook, and John Woo, as well as the composer John Zorn, who called it ​“a cinematic masterpiece that transcends its genre.” —Tom Vick

In Japanese with English subtitles

“Less a re-imagining of the gangster film à la Melville, or a Tarantinoian rewriting of the rules, Branded to Kill completely dismantles the genre from the ground up on both a formal and narrative level … [Satisfies], albeit subversively, a few of the genre’s most exciting tropes before descending into complete madness.”

Max Frank, Cine-File

“Stylistic brilliance … Both iconoclastic and representative, it remains a key film of its decade.”

Alexander Jacoby, Sight and Sound