Ghostdog follows Forrest Whitaker as an assassin who lives by bushido, the code of the samurai. Its directed by Jim Jarmusch & is fairly quirky: Whittaker lives in a shack on a roof & communicates with his mafia client via pigeon only, you don't see Whittaker in action very often, the mafia featured seem a little threadbare, hanging out in the backroom of a Chinese resteraunt, behind on their rent. RZA provides the soundtrack, which, of course, is unifrmly in keeping with what is on screen.
I last saw Ghostdog in 2003. Fast foward to 2009 and its interesting to see how it has fared. Instead of it being a one-off, interesting idea that seemed an offshoot of the ideas of the Wu-Tang Clan, it now seems like the forefather of almost a genre, with Samurai Champloo and Afro Samurai following suit. Interesting that what was at first a more adult genre with attention paid to Whittaker's reading and living by the Hakagure evolved towards anime which focuses more on the style and flash rather than the philsophy. One of Ghostdog's biggest features is talking the time to try and understand Whittaker, the sense of honor and discipline he has brought to his life. The anime that followed seem to say 'yeah, yeah, let's just make it cool and have a bunch of fighting'. Interesting also how Ghostdog is a contemporary American production which espouses old Japanese traditions better than contemporary Japanese productions x 2.
Ghostdog is worth seeing if nothing else than a meditation on context, identity and belonging. Just don't expect endless action or that the Jarmusch touch won't be present.
The soundtrack is interesting too, a lot of jazzy influenced hip hop beats which to my mind is way better relaxtaion tunes than Buddha Bar etc.
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