Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai

Forest Whitaker hasn’t played too many lead roles in his career, but when he does — as in Clint Eastwood’s Bird, for example — he absolutely holds the screen in the palm of his hand. Jim Jarmusch wrote Ghost Dog with the actor in mind, and exploring interests like Asian philosophy, samurai culture, hiphop, post bop jazz and the decline of the mafia crime families in New York City — “but always with Forest at the centre.” Ghost Dog is a professional assassin for the mob, but he’s also an existential loner who adheres to his personal code (like Alain Delon in Melville’s film Le Samourai). And he’s a bit of an intellectual. Someone engaged by art and ideas. Despite the thriller trappings, this is really a lampoon of that genre, and a melancholy reverie for the cultural melting pot that we call home.

Ghost Dog has retained all of the cool, the quirk, the profundity it captured in a bottle in 1999…

Ed Travis, Cinapse

Less a pastiche than a mastermix from a cinematic DJ at the height of his formalist powers.

Glenn Kenny, Premiere

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