Monday Movie Reviews #12: Ghost Dog

I really should stop calling these Monday Movie Reviews. Just number them sequentially and call it good.

So I watched Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai and it turned out to be a lot better than I expected it to be. So, first things first, up front let me note that the profanity was pretty relentless since this is a mob movie about a hitman. It wasn't British mob movie bad, but it was pretty bad. There isn't really any sex, but there is quite a bit of violence. It's not too gory, but a lot of people get shot and these aren't old Western shots where there's a bang and the guy falls down. They use squibs, but there isn't too much splatter. Okay, on to the plot.

The story starts with a hit on a man inside the mob for reasons I didn't pick up on. Maybe they were there, maybe they weren't. But whatever the reason, stated or unstated, it wasn't terribly important. The key is that the mob hit one of its own secretly and then those involved tried to hide their involvement. This gets our plot rolling. The plot itself, however, is somewhat secondary to the character study of the hitman, Ghost Dog.

Ghost Dog is chosen to do the hit because he's good and he's discreet. During the hit, he's seen by a girl we later discover is the daughter of the mob boss. What makes Ghost Dog so unique is that he follows, you guessed it, the way of the samurai. He thinks of himself as a vassal of the minor mobster for whom he works. He is unfailingly loyal to this man despite the seeming unworthiness of his "lord". This loyalty is born of the fact that when Ghost Dog (a black man) was being beaten up as a young man by a group of white racists, the mobster intervened, shooting at least one of his attackers and presumably saving the life of Ghost Dog.

The rest of the movie follows the attempts of the mob to kill Ghost Dog to remove those with knowledge that the mob hit one of its own and Ghost Dog's attempt to survive while remaining loyal to his "lord". Considered as a movie telling a story, it's a bit long, muddled and convoluted, but if it's understood as a meditation on the duties of a samurai in the modern world, the virtues of loyalty, honour, and courage, and the study of a man who tries to live by an ancient code, it's not too bad.

I wouldn't suggest it to folks to like mob movies, since it doesn't quite mesh with the customary films in that genre, but anyone with an interest in samurai might enjoy seeing that code translated to a modern, urban environment and it might be interesting for folks who like character-driven movies over plot-driven ones.