Tokyo Drifter1966
Both on Nicolas Winding Refn’s Top 10, and both directed by Seijun Suzuki
Branded to Kill
殺しの烙印
Japan / Japanese / 1967 / 1h 31m
- Criterion Collection
- Spine №38
- Connections
- View Connections
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.
