Branded to Kill is the kind of film that makes me want to realize my dream of becoming a filmmaker so I can make films just like this. Perhaps not a film I could absolutely understand, it is one that exhibits an impressive amount of sheer audacity, and if there is something I admire in an artist, it is a palpable sense of daring bravery and dismissal of conventions. In an era where Japanese cinema was in its pinnacle, where filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa and Yasujirō Ozu were arguably at their peak, making sophisticated, complex films, Seijun Suzuki was preparing to make the film that would temporarily halt his career due to its contrived subject matter and puzzling execution. Branded to Kill is a fascinating achievement, a masterful and highly-influential dark comedy that I may not understand completely, but rather found exceptionally strange and absolutely endearing, and charming in a very offbeat way. Branded to Kill is a zany subversion of film noir tropes, and its influence on cinema has been monumental, with filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, John Woo and Jim Jarmusch all citing this film as inspirations to their own work, with traces of it being scattered generously throughout their careers. In all honesty, Branded to Kill is a tremendous film and one I did really enjoy, albeit not completely being able to follow it, which I assume was the intention of this very idiosyncratic masterwork, to incite complete confusion into the viewer as we scramble to put the pieces together and come to a conclusion as to what this film is actually saying. It was postmodern before postmodernism was popular, which is quite remarkable.

The film is focused on the Japanese yakuza, with our anti-hero being Goro Hanada (Joe Shishido). The yakuza utilizes a group of assassins in their worldwide network, with a ranking of the most deadly motivating them to choose certain killers to execute their plans. Hanada is currently ranked as the third most deadly killer in the country, but his aspirations are much higher, with him hoping to achieve the title of the most deadly assassin in Japan. However, the identity of the elusive Number One is unknown, which is more terrifying than if it was public knowledge, with characters constantly watching their backs in the hopes that they won’t become victims to the vicious assassin, including Hanada, who makes a fatal mistake that lands him on the hit-list for Number One, after accidentally murdering an innocent person. Over the course of the film, Hanada executes the will of his superiors, as well as resisting the twisted charms of a young woman named Misako (Annu Mari) who wants nothing more than to die, and a bevy of fellow killers who are not nearly as skillfully professional as the protagonist, who finds himself sinking into deep paranoia after he discovers he’s a target, and that his days are very much numbered if he doesn’t take careful precaution and pay attention to his every move. He also has a fetish for the smell of boiling rice, which is something.

I found Branded to Kill to be a supremely strange film and considering I am not someone adverse to mind-bending filmmaking (after all, I do pray at the altars of David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky). Yet, I could not help wondering if I was missing something with this film, or if the film was intentionally this confusing. To call Branded to Kill a bewildering film is an understatement – it borders on the incoherent, having a story filled with twists and turns that are so frequent yet unexpected, that simply taking your eyes off the screen for a moment could result in even more perplexity. Yet, this is not a shortcoming, but a great merit, because it takes the approach of being intentionally convoluted and overly-complex and works it into the film, creating something wonderfully difficult, a dense and enigmatic portrayal of the underground crime syndicates the rule over Japan and hold vast power over people who don’t even realize the scope of violence that occurs right around the corner. Much like the great surrealists, Suzuki understands that coherency in a film is not mandatory and that if someone is playful enough with the concept and is able to skillfully captivate the audience’s attention, confusion can be a powerful narrative tool. Suzuki does exceptionally well with the concept here, and while I won’t pretend that this film made complete sense, it still resonates as a powerful work.

Joe Shishido occupies the main role, and he is terrific. Playing the character of Hanada, we see him transform from a cold, ruthless killer who is able to slaughter people without any emotion or even a hint of remorse, to a paranoid, insecure and endlessly-frightened person who used to feel so secure in his skills, but after a tragic mistake, finds himself at the mercy of the people he previously sought to impress. It is a poignant performance, and one that required the actor to play two very different and equally-difficult personas – complete anarchic apathy and unhinged fear. This is a character we are supposed to relate to somehow, despite nothing about him being redeeming, but Shishido does well with the character. Annu Mari is despicably beguiling as the sinister young woman who lusts for death – either her own or that of another, and she forges a performance that leaves an indelible impression. Finally, the most impressive performance came from Kōji Nanbara as Number One, who (as evident by his name) is the most feared killer in the organization. Debuting properly only in the third act, Nanbara’s performance is incredible – simultaneously terrifying and deceptively charming, he brings an exciting new energy to a film that benefits from his relentlessly malicious performance. The interactions between Nanbara and Shishido, especially when Number One quite literally takes over Hanada’s life, are extremely memorable, with some of the finest moments in this film coming on behalf of this duo, who ground the film from being completely nonsensical.

I had previously heard Branded to Kill described as “an absurdist masterpiece”, and considering I have grown fascinated with the absurdism movement (especially in comparison with surrealism), I was raring to give Branded to Kill a chance. I can admit that I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but if I was looking for a delirious, offbeat and odd experience, this certainly was it. Exemplifying the concept of absurdity to grotesque perfection, Suzuki crafts something uncomfortably brilliant. Filming Branded to Kill in gorgeous black-and-white, Suzuki captures the raw angst of Japanese society, showing a different side of a nation usually portrayed as being imbued with virtue, honour and decency, and in looking at a completely different demographic, not really shown outside of genre pictures like Branded to Kill, the director is able to sardonically comment on social order and expectations in a way that is unexpectedly profound and even more subversive when you consider how this film caused an uproar with executives who were seeking something slightly more straightforward.

There is very little doubt that what makes Branded to Kill so distinctive is its complete disregard for consistency or logic, as well as its liberal use of heightened violence to make its point, and while this may be quite ersatz for some viewers, I could not imagine a story like this one being told in any other way. A bitterly sardonic dark comedy that is played almost entirely straight, there are some moment of bewilderingly illogical fallacies and deeply unsettling violence that elicit more laughter than discomfort (one just needs to consider our anti-hero murdering a doctor by shooting him through the plumbing system, a scene replicated by Jim Jarmusch in his film Ghost Dog: the Way of the Samurai). The film doesn’t make a great deal of sense, but through its idiosyncratic quirks, it comments on social paranoia, gang violence and deception, themes that are not unique to this film but made so much more evident with Suzuki’s unique approach. It finds its charms in its carefully-constructed chaos and makes some bold statements that are not extremely overt but are evident on closer inspection.

There is a lot that can be said about Branded to Kill, but it certainly is effective and lingers on in the mind of the viewer. It is a dizzying blend of mysteries, suspense and excessive violence that adds up to something quite extraordinary. Confounding but effective, Branded to Kill has some great performances in a film that one can only respond with through either powerful astonishment or bewildered angst. It is deceptively charming, often insanely hilarious and earnestly a thrilling and unique experience. Suzuki would find his career being put in hiatus as a result of this very strange film, but it seems to have been worth it, because he really made an exceptional gem, a subversive and highly original crime thriller that is entirely unforgettable and tremendously entertaining, and remains one of the most oddball achievements of Japanese cinema (second perhaps only to House from 1977, which I don’t even think can count as a film). Seijin Suzuki made something offbeat and brilliant, and most importantly, as audacious as they come, proving this film to be a testament to the limits of narrative cinema and an exercise in illogical grandeur. In the words of Thomas Pynchon, why should things be easy to understand?