Branded to Kill
殺しの烙印
Japan • 1967
Director
#38Criterion Collection →Synopsis
When Japanese New Wave bad boy Seijun Suzuki delivered this brutal, hilarious, and visually inspired masterpiece to the executives at his studio, he was promptly fired. BRANDED TO KILL tells the ecstatically bent story of a yakuza assassin with a fetish for sniffing steamed rice (the chipmunk-cheeked superstar Joe Shishido) who botches a job and ends up a target himself. This is Suzuki at his most extreme—the flabbergasting pinnacle of his sixties pop-art aesthetic.
Synopsis
When Japanese New Wave bad boy Seijun Suzuki delivered this brutal, hilarious, and visually inspired masterpiece to the executives at his studio, he was promptly fired. BRANDED TO KILL tells the ecstatically bent story of a yakuza assassin with a fetish for sniffing steamed rice (the chipmunk-cheeked superstar Joe Shishido) who botches a job and ends up a target himself. This is Suzuki at his most extreme—the flabbergasting pinnacle of his sixties pop-art aesthetic.
Criterion Closet Pick
(1)
Credits
Crew
DirectorSeijun Suzuki
WriterAtsushi Yamatoya, Yasuaki Hangai, Seiichirō Yamaguchi, Chūsei Sone, Seijun Suzuki, Yōzō Tanaka, Takeo Kimura, Yutaka Okada
CinematographerKazue Nagatsuka
ComposerNaozumi Yamamoto
EditorAkira Suzuki, Mutsuo Tanji
ProducerTakiko Mizunoe, Kaneo Iwai