Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai 4K 1999 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

Ghost Dog is a hired assassin who has submitted his life to the ancient laws of samurai honor. He serves his master, who once saved his life, without complaint.

Review 4K Movie

At first glance a simple movie with a leisurely drive in a stolen Lexus GS 400 under the "music" of RZA. Lexus is like Forrest Whitaker's character - unhurried, big and black... Everything would be as it always is in such movies when almost everyone died at the end, if not for the philosophy of Hagakure, and it is just about that. The spirit of Yamamoto Tsunetomo, who systematized the medieval code of samurai rules, hovers like a dove over all the events of the film.

Director Jim Jarmusch skillfully pushes all the opposites in the course of the movie: black chocolate and white vanilla ice cream, modern industrial landscape and medieval worldview, English with French, infantile life of mobsters and their advanced age, aggressive monkey-like rappers and "correct" hip-hopper RZA (in the episode, a Negro in camouflage greeting Ghost Dog in a ceremonious oriental way) and so on to infinity.

On the third or fifth time of watching it you will already enjoy savoring and parsing the in-depth content of individual episodes. By the way, the sound of The RZA is "quite dirty, raw, penetrating beat, but it is always recognizable", and if you make an effort and get used to the soundtrack you will realize that the other is not appropriate here.

A funny detail, almost none of those who wrote about the movie noticed, the headquarters of the Italian mafia clan is in the back room of the restaurant, where the natives of South-East Asia work, and as the movie is saturated with Eastern philosophy, feng shui was not an exception. On the doorjamb facing inside the room with the mafia leaders hangs a mirror "ba-gua", reflecting the negative "sha" coming, apparently, from them in their own direction. The work of hands not otherwise cooks Asians, because the elderly consigliere Don Ray Vargo and his vizier Sonny Valerio: "Indians, niggers - one hell...".

Another detail that lies on the surface is the Japanese cut of Ghost Dog's left eye, which is probably meant to indicate the character's dual nature of African-American and Japanese. Wasn't Whitaker's congenital facial mishap an important component in choosing the actor for the lead role?

I would like to point out the excellent play of a carefully selected cast led by Forest Whitaker, and just a great game John Tormey played "master" Ghost Dog hapless and emotional mobster Louis, probably the best role of the actor. Jarmusch managed to squeeze far more out of a three million dollar budget than was possible. But what if it had been two hundred million?

The movie is by all accounts a solid, multi-layered, meaningful work of cinematic art. In the end, if we draw from the intellectual pools of the film, we can even notice the crisis elements of the bushido philosophy, marking the fatalistic darkening of the late medieval pagan Japanese civilization before meeting the Western Christian world.

I will conclude my review with lines from Hagakure: "It is good to have a sense of calm strength in your letters. Moreover, do not forget what the priest Ryozan was told when he was in the Kamigata region: 'When you write a letter, write it in such a way that you are not ashamed to hang it on the wall.'"