Branded to Kill

Goro Hanada is the number three contract killer in Japan. He botches a job: the bullet hits a butterfly in flight and the target lives. From then on he is the target, and the man ranked first comes after him. Number One never shows himself, only makes his presence felt, walks into the house, sits beside him while he sleeps. The film takes the crime picture apart. Locations do not connect, time jumps, some scenes end without explanation. Hanada's weakness is not an abstraction either: he cannot work without smelling steamed rice, and that fixation is the film's most quoted detail. Seijun Suzuki directed. Jo Shishido plays Hanada. The consequences for Suzuki were serious. Nikkatsu's president Kyusaku Hori hated the film and dismissed him for making incomprehensible films. Suzuki sued for unfair dismissal in 1968; students, audiences and other filmmakers rallied to him and the case became a cause in Japanese film culture. He won it, and then could not make a theatrical film for a decade. Who it is for: anyone who likes sixties Japanese crime cinema and narratives broken up by design. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a plot they can follow. The film is deliberately opaque, the women are used as objects, and the last section is close to abstract.