Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

Plot synopsis:
Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker) sees himself as a retainer of Louie (John Tormey), a local mobster, who saved Ghost Dog's life years ago. While living as a hired hitman for the American Mafia, he adheres to the code of the samurai, and interprets and applies the wisdom of the Hagakure in his contracts for the mob.
Louie tells Ghost Dog to kill a gangster, Handsome Frank, who is sleeping with the daughter (Tricia Vessey) of local mafia don Vargo (Henry Silva). Ghost Dog arrives and kills the gangster, before seeing that the girl is also in the room at the time; she lends him a book; he leaves her alive, and exits. In order to avoid being implicated in the murder of a made man, Vargo and his associate Sonny Valerio decide to get rid of Ghost Dog. Louie knows practically nothing about Ghost Dog, and the hitman communicates only by homing pigeon. The mobsters start by tracing all the pigeon coops in town. They find Ghost Dog's cabin atop a building and kill his pigeons. Ghost Dog realizes he must kill the entire mafia or otherwise they will kill him and his master.
During the day, Ghost Dog frequently visits the park to see his best friend, a Haitian ice cream salesman named Raymond (Isaach De Bankolé) who speaks only French. Ghost Dog does not understand French and Raymond does not understand English, but the two seem to understand each other. Ghost Dog also makes friends with a little girl named Pearline (Camille Winbush), to whom he lends the book —Rashōmon and Other Stories— he received from Vargo's daughter. Paralleling a major theme of Rashōmon, Louie and Ghost Dog have different accounts of the circumstances of their meeting: in Louie's flashback he shoots Ghost Dog's attacker in self-defense, while in Ghost Dog's flashback, Louie shoots the attacker just as the attacker is about to kill Ghost Dog.
Eventually, Ghost Dog attacks Vargo's mansion single-handedly and kills almost everyone he encounters, sparing only Louie and Vargo's daughter. At night, Ghost Dog kills Sonny Valerio in his house, shooting a bullet through Valerio´s bathroom pipe. Ghost Dog is later expecting that Louie attacks him (as he feels that, according to the mob code, Louie must avenge the murder of his boss Vargo). He goes to the park and gives Raymond all his money, helping him to stay in the country and build a boat. Pearline appears and gives back Rashōmon to Ghost Dog, expressing that she liked it. Ghost Dog then gives Pearline his copy of Hagakure and encourages her to read it.
Though Louie feels some loyalty to Ghost Dog, he finally confronts Ghost Dog at Raymond's ice cream stand with Raymond and Pearline watching. Ghost Dog is unwilling to attack his master and allows Louie to kill him. His last act is to give Louie the copy of Rashōmon and encourage him to read it. It is then revealed that Vargo's daughter ordered Louie to murder Ghost Dog. Pearline takes Ghost Dog's gun and shoots at Louie, but the gun is empty. Ghost Dog dies peacefully with Raymond and Pearline at his side. Later, Pearline reads passionately the Hagakure, indicating that she may follow Ghost Dog's way in the future.

Tags: violence, psychedelic, philosophical, murder, flashback

Review:
Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai   * * * * Stars Forest Whitaker stars in this amazingly good character driven film.
Whitaker is Ghost Dog, a New York hitman who lives by the code of the ancient samurai.
However both aspects work exceptionally well, the effect taken as a whole make this one of the best films of the past few years.Besides Whitaker and his friends, one other great performance is given by Tricia Vessey as Louise Vargo, the young girl that sets all that happens in motion.
Like the changing of the wind the changing of time and circumstance is neither good nor bad when weighed against his code.While Whitaker deserves infinite praise for his performance, almost just as much praise must be given to director Jim Jarmush.
A performance from Forrest Whitaker, as the dedicated, un-hinged-from reality 'samurai' known as Ghost Dog, which ranks among his best and shows in plain sight that he can carry an action film with patience and cool.
And the film also carries a fine sense of humor to many scenes - the fact that these gangsters (one of which Dog's boss) watch more cartoons than take care of business is as funny as the way they interact sometimes.
It's a gangster movie, but every five minutes or so there's philosophical notes on the way of the samurai that seems more in place in a (good, thematically engaging) art film than a (good, shoot-em-up) Hollywood actioner.
It's a movie about urban-life, yet the only signs of Urbana are shown from a distance, where the only two who will talk to Ghost Dog are a Haitian ice cream guy (who provides a wonderfully weird scene on the roof with Ghost Dog), and a little girl who likes to read.
One of the Mafia wiseguys must be killed as he is having an affair with the daughter of the Mafia Don.The person they get to do it is an African American who lives by the code of the Samurai and goes by the name of Ghost Dog. To be honest, I have met many Japanafiles so this is not so unbelievable.
But the code of the Mafia means that if you kill a wiseguy then you must be killed or the Mafia person who hired him must be killed.Jim Jarmusch makes movies where the characters close relations based on only very small things.
If you saw Dead man and like it, then you will love Ghost Dog. It is funny, serious, dark, tragic and beautiful all at the same time.
The funniest guy, at least to me, was the mobster who sang and danced to rap music!The byplay between "Ghost Dog," the hero of the movie played wonderfully by Forest Whitaker, and the ice cream man, who only spoke French, also was fun and entertaining.Almost every character in here was a strange, led by Whitaker who plays a modern-day hit-man who lives by the code of the ancient Samurai warriors.
Hey, I said this was a bizarre movie!The violence was no-nonsense, however, nothing played for laughs and unlike Rambo-mentality, people who were shot at were hit and usually killed right away.Along the way on this strange tale was a lesson or two on loyalty, racism, philosophies, kindness, communication, etc.
It tells the story of an African-American mafia hit-man in New York who lives by the rules of the Samurai, in simplicity and alone with his pigeons, who calls himself Ghost Dog and who is always faithful to his master, a local mobster who has saved his life several years ago.
And while his life is in constant danger, the only people he ever has contact with are a little girl, with whom he discusses books, and a Haitian ice cream man who only speaks French and doesn't understand a word of what Ghost Dog tells him.I guess the best way to categorize this movie is to call it a mix of the movie "Léon", the Samurai code and hip-hop culture.
Add to this some nice acting, a cool and well-written story, some funny moments (like for instance a rapping mobster) and what you'll get is a movie that is fun and interesting to watch.
Both groups live and die by the code, and this is probably the most important thing in the movie, and it's shown with respect with both Samurai and mafia; I'm not entirely sure that it's correct all the way through, but that's not what's most important, anyway.
"Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai" is one of those movies that might have seemed like a really god idea on script and in concept idea, but translated to the screen not so much.
With all due respect for Forest Whitaker and his great acting talent, then he was just the wrong physical choice for the role of Ghost Dog.I will say that Forest Whitaker does play well in "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai", despite being wrongly cast for the role, but he ended up looking like a fish out of water.Once the movie ended, I sat with a very bored feeling and thinking 'what was the purpose of this movie?' "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai" wasn't innovative or spectacular in any way.
Basically, Jim Jarmush's best (and most accessible) film; Forrest Whitaker's best performance (and the best performances by a host of little recognized but worthy character actors), the best sound track, best music from the RZA; - I mean, '90's film-making just couldn't get better than this, and if you're having trouble understanding this, then read some books and see some movies, because this is a film that does not talk "down" to its audience, but expects us to live up to it.This is a film about the clash - and potential interweaving - of very different cultures.
This new film, written and directed by the Dean of Independent film makers ("Down by Law," "Night on Earth," and "Dead Man," just to name a few of his masterpieces), is a WONDERFUL, entertaining, and powerful work about a New York City inner city young man, played marvellously by Forest Whitaker, who studies and lives the way of the ancient Samurai warriors.
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai is a film that showed much promise, but delivered none.
Instead of a slow-paced comedic drama, Ghost Dog is a slow-paced bloody crime film.The plot deals with Ghost Dog (Whitaker), an expert mafia assassin living in present-day New York City who lives his life according to the ancient code of the Samurai.Jarmusch somewhat reverses what Akira Kurosawa did in Throne of Blood by bringing Eastern culture to a Western setting.
It's a rather fascinating idea, but I can't help but feel that Jarmusch kind of falls into a trap he teeters on almost constantly in his films: while he's so busy creating a slow, brooding atmosphere and interweaving subtle underlying themes, he occasionally forgets that this is still a movie.
Forest Whitaker is absolutely perfect as Ghost Dog - detached, subtle, nuanced, and, most importantly, human.Still, I hesitate to recommend this film.
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai is much more down to earth than most of Jarmusch's earlier films, but it still has that coolness in it's essence, and although it isn't vintage Jarmusch; it's still a very good movie.
All in all, what it lacks in coolness; Ghost Dog makes up for in originality.This movie is very much what film fans would class as an "indie".
The director has made best use of the casting, and Forest Whitaker, despite not being an actor with an impressive list of lead roles to his credit, pulls out an excellent performance that brilliantly fits the tone of the movie.
Jarmusch has written lots of great and absurdly funny scenes for the movie, the best of which is the one in which Ghost Dog's employer explains the arrangement to a baffled group of colleagues - it's comedy genius!
We've seen enough of pseudointellectual musings on oriental ways and culture from Americans who understand nothing of it, and we could have done without this slow and boring film, full of cliches and uninvolving non-action scenes..
The movie is supposed to be about some guy who took up the Samurai way, but if there is ever a movie that belittles violence and glamorizes it, this is the one.(Discussion of the plot follows here.) Just because someone saved his life, this main character goes around and kills people for him, and gets paid for the gangland murders.
Surrilistic movie about ancient ethics in the modern world with Forest Whitaker as the Man as hard and tough as Samurai Steel the mystical Ghost Dog. John Tormey is Louie his savior and master Louie who in the end has to shoot it out, like in an old western movie, with Ghost Dog to make amends for both theirs mistakes and wrong doings in life.
A bit deep in some places but still interesting movie with Ghost Dog using his brains brawn's and belief in the Code of the Samurai to do in the entire Vergo Mob. These two-bit hoodlum foolishly thought that he was an easy mark and that they would have no trouble at all to put him away, how wrong they were..
When Forest Whitaker's Ghost Dog practices his 'way of the Samurai', it sometimes seems like he's taking himself way too seriously.
One comment claimed that with Ghost Dog Jarmusch had surpassed Terentino but the bad guys in Pulp Fiction were cetrtainly ten times more credible and certainly just as funny.I could go on with many more things that bothered me, but I am sure that by now, you get the general idea.
Add a highly stylish soundtrack, total urban decay and an afroamerican hit-man who lives amongst pigeons and you get a masterpiece.Please do hire this movie, but don't expect a "Menace II Society" (which, by the way, is an excellent flick in its genre!).
I rented Ghost Dog on a Saturday night because I heard good reviews and I've liked other Jim Jarmusch films (Mystery Train, Dead Man) and I convinced my friends that we should get it over the usual action films or lame comedies.
All the samurai stuff makes the film feel deeper than it is and the code of honour is Ghost Dog's live is something we all admire in hitmen.
In the Coffee in Cigarettes films he is short and sweet but the two hours sniper rigmarole the Ghost Dog is is way too long even with the Samurai sub-text.In Dead Man and Ghost Dog it's much more about the values of Jarmusch's than about his true vitaly as a filmmaker.
If you enjoy films that require some thought, and are patient enough to appreciate a slow pace, then you'll probably love Ghost Dog. Well written and direction - a nice juxtaposition of several different mythos at once.
Conflating the samurai tenet within a tailing-off gangster underworld in an unnamed USA city, Jim Jarmusch's version of LE SAMOURAI is profoundly branded with his idiosyncrasies: a nocturnal cityscape tinged with retro-flair (mostly seen behind the wheels), a vibrating, mind-bending, killer soundtrack (courtesy to RZA), a perversity and absurdity presiding over the turn of events (cartoon hooked mobsters, a lethal shot fired from a drain pipe, the cameo of Gary Farmer's Nobody from DEAD MAN 1995, etc.), a tangy timbre of acedia inhabits in some of his dramatis personae (the boss's daughter portrayed with crashing nonchalance by a sylph-like Tricia Vessey) and a total abandon of anhedonia (twice, the dog's gaze is the self-reflexive bellwether of a preordained corollary).Ghost Dog (Whitaker), a self-claimed retainer of the world-weary mobster Louie (Tormey), who has saved his life eight years ago, is a proficient hit-man abiding by the codes of HAGAKURE: THE BOOK OF THE SAMAURAI, written by Yamamoto Tsunetomo in the early 18th century, living alone in the top of a building with a bevy of messenger pigeons, his disciplined life and allegiance is challenged when the local mafia boss Ray Vargo (a deadpan Silva) and his right-hand man Sonny Valerio (Gorman), both superiors of Louie, decide to do away with Ghost Dog as a scapegoat for a mission he has adroitly accomplished, a fatuous move because they have no inking of Ghost Dog's credentials, who will become their imminent nemesis, save the wobbling Louie, who is inadvertently submitted to the receiving end of Ghost Dog's undivided loyalty, chiming in with the RASHOMON (a book which undergoes a ritualistic full circle in the end) motif, even their recollections of their first encounter are different (with clear visual aid here), which shrewdly explains the discrepancy of their attitudes, for Louie it may be merely a self-defense, yet for Ghost Dog, he roundly leaves his own life to the mercy of Louie.
Forest Whitaker superbly channels a less laconic Alain Delon in the titular role, but is far more superior in transmitting a loner's variegated inscape, hewing to his codes of honor and living by liquidation of mortals, but it doesn't necessarily negate that he can have a warm soul underneath, and truly, the warmth quotient increases whenever there is a scene between him and Isaach De Bankolé's motormouth Raymond, the latter is the bees knee for a sore eye, amusingly and edifyingly, Jarmusch points up that human beings can build a communicative bond in spite of a seemingly insurmountable language barrier, and it is this humanistic perspective gives the film an edge over its built-in romanticism of indiscriminately adhering to something exotic and gnomic, so at large, GHOST DOG is worth cherry-picking by both Jarmusch newbies and diehards..
The eponymous protagonist of Jim Jarmusch's 1999 film GHOST DOG is an African-American hit-man (Forest Whitaker) working for an Italian mafia in New Jersey and living according to the Hagakure, Japan's samurai code.
The film follows Ghost Dog's revenge and depicts a clash between two ancient tribes that both seem out of date in this modern world: Ghost Dog's samurai code and Italian mafia ideas of loyalty.Jarmusch has always been open about the fact that he soaks up a huge number of inspirations from earlier films, books, and music and then lets them reflect in his own work.
Forest Whitaker quotes from Hagakure throughout the film, and there are also references to the work of Akira Kurosawa.But GHOST DOG is not a remake, and Jarmusch takes the basic premise in a very individual direction.
Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker) dutifully follows Hagakure, The Way of the Samurai.
He was, however, the best thing about this movie with Camille Winbush as Pearline coming in a close second.The character of Ghost Dog is one that develops over the course of this film.
Whitaker does a fine job in delivering a complex and developing character as Ghost Dog is always looking to improve himself and help those around him based on the code he lives by.
So I revisited one of my favorite movies "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai", well is it an indy classic, well i say hai (that's yes gaijin)!
The odd characters that pop up throughout the film are one of the things Jarmusch does brilliantly and this movie is no exception, and the ending is perfect.
Jarmusch Mixes It Up. Based loosely on Le Samurai, by French New Wave director, Jean-Pierre Melville, Ghost Dog tells the story of a hit-man who lives by the code laid out for him in the book, The Way of the Samurai.
Ghost Dog is an excellent ode to Hip-Hop and samurai movies, molded into a framework of European film making.
Sometimes the movie is funny, especially when there are those cumbersome aging mafia men on the scene and sometimes it's sorrowful (e.g. when Ghost Dog's pigeons are killed or when he is sitting in the park alone).
Along the way we meet the weird character of Ghost Dog,played skillfully by Forest Whittaker, and the mafia family, who watch cartoons and listen to hip hop and rap music.
Also the character of Ghost Dogs best friend, the French ice cream man, who is played really well.
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai is much to that same effect, but instead of seeing it, it just wants you to watch.
This is helped by one of Forest Whittaker's finest performances (and there have been some good ones over the years) and an overall feel to the film which is almost like a play, set as it is in several acts (works brilliantly on DVD, by the way).
Jim Jarmusch,  who's done some pretty cool stuff (Dead Man with Johnny Depp) made one cool film when he wrote Ghost Dog: way of the samurai.
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai is a great quirky film!!!.
Forest Whitaker, gives a magnificent acting performance as the main character of the film playing, The Ghost Dog, a hitman who lives by the code of the Samurai.
The Ghost Dog performs a hit on a man they want dead.
You won't find "Ghost Dog" to be a very good film, but at least you can say you saw something interesting.What it is, ultimately, is some good B-movie entertainment.
Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker) is a reclusive samurai warrior who everyone in his neighborhood knows and respects.
"Ghost Dog" is a film I knew I would like the first time I heard about it and its premise and that Forest Whitaker (a personal favourite, I must say) was in it.
I liked 'Ghost Dog', It had the feel of a movie that had been edited on a kitchen table...a true 'indie' film from begining to end...great cinematography, a cool story, and acting fairly tongue in cheek.(But slow...so very slow...)A liesurly paced film with lots of haunting shots of urban squallar...at the center of it, is the haunting prescence of Ghostdog, a young black man lost in the ideas of the ancient text of the samurai.