ghostdog

This film is about Ghost Dog ( Forest Whitaker) , a hitman who lives his life according to the code of the samurai. He lives in a shack on top of a building with his pigeons , and works for Louie , a member of the local mafia, who saved Ghost Dogs life eight years ago. Ghost Dog, like all samurai has great respect for his boss, and does deals on hits with him via carrier pigeon ! One night, a hit goes wrong, and Louies superiors demand to know who he uses for his hits. Louie isn't sure where to find Ghost Dog himself, but tells the mafia head honcho ( played by the always entertaining Henry Silva ) that his man is a big black guy who tends pigeons. This leads to a few pigeon keepers being shot by mistake, and Ghost Dog hunting down the members of the mob while still staying loyal to Louie.

It was great to see a good independant crime drama, which is something you don't really see being made a lot any more. The character of Ghost Dog was a pretty interesting one. The movie constantly had him serving as a kind of narrator, quoting passages from samurai lore. He even gave his pistols a little swordlike flick after dispatching an enemy, in the same way that the samurai flicked their foes blood off their swords after a kill. He also liked lending his favorite books to people, and getting feedback from them.The mafia guys were good in this too..... Jim Jarmusch humanised them a lot which was good, because at the end of the day criminals are still just ordinary people.

The scenes where Ghost Dog went to see his best freind were pretty interesting, too. His best freind is a Frenchman who can't speak English, and Ghost Dog can't speak French. Somehow though, they both still understand what the other is talking about. The French guy runs an icecream truck, and every day he tells passers by that he heard on the radio recently that ice cream is good for you. When things start falling apart in the film, he tells Ghost Dog "bad news...I heard on the radio this morning that icecream is bad for you". He also philosiphises that "vanilla is the most popular flavour the world over, but chocolate is the best". So Ghost Dog lives by the samurai code, and apparently his freind lives by the icecream code. This movie also had some pretty funny dialog. After a mafia member is scolded by Louie for shooting a female police officer , he says " She was a cop. Women want eqaulity, So I shot her.....you can't get much more equal than that !".

This also had some of the more creative killing I've seen in a while. In one instance Ghost Dog sticks a piece of contact plastic over a window, and shoots a guy through it to prevent the window from shattering. The ending was also pretty memorable, when Louie confronts him in the street, and Ghost Dog must decide whether he values the samurai code above his life. This is one of those movies that is released, and for some strange reason ,vanishes into obscurity without anyone ever seeing it.