But always with this strange element of comic deflection: a sense that at least some of the fable of Ghost Dog is tongue-in-cheek. In Summer of Sam, Spike Lee stepped back and made the white wise guys the heroes of a classic New York story for his part, Jarmusch envisions a kind of guarded respect between the black and Italian tough guys of urban and celluloid history. And Sonny himself turns out to have a bit of a penchant for Flavor Flav of Public Enemy. Sonny muses that "all these black guys" give themselves street names like Ghost Dog, and that's like the "Indians" who call themselves Red Cloud or Running Bear - or, as it ironically turns out, like mafiosi who call themselves things like Sammy the Snake.
![ghost dog ghost dog](https://media.distractify.com/brand-img/5i6owIj6M/0x0/ghost-dog-collar-tiktok-1634747709782.jpg)
They are, says Ghost Dog, like two ancient tribes, who in this film come to accord each other, if not exactly friendship, a kind of wary recognition. But not before Jarmusch has established a kind of rapprochement between their two cultures and codes of honour. Ghost Dog effectively reclaims his self- respect - if that is, in fact, what he has lost - when the mafiosi turn on him, and he has to take them out with his usual inscrutable self-possession. No explicit comment about the racial politics of his situation passes Ghost Dog's lips, but Ruffini's Consigliere, a man given to strange Tourette-squawks, jeers that he is "just another nigger". Ghost Dog evidently thinks it no dishonour to be the bonded servant of Louie and the Italian wise guys who are his ultimate masters: a trio of crackling performances from Cliff Gorman as Sonny Valerio, Henry Silva as Vargo, and Gene Ruffini as an Old Consigliere. Ghost Dog is supposed to have formed this romantic loyalty - albeit one he is well paid for - when Louie (John Tormey) stops Dog from being beaten up by some white guys in an alley. The chief complexity, or maybe the chief implausibility, of the film is the relationship of the black hero, Ghost Dog, to the white Italian-American who is employer or "retainer". But the effect Jarmusch achieves is so enjoyable and distinctive, and it shows something individually and engagingly developed in its approach to cinema gangland - something which our dire Britpack, with its callow, saucer-eyed reverence for gangsters, could study. It all creates for this film a taste which has to be rolled around the mouth for a little while to see if you like it and, in terms of type, it is pretty well sui generis.
Ghost dog movie#
The effect is comic and a little absurd, and the movie is almost daring us to laugh at, or maybe with, Ghost Dog and the eccentric belief system he has constructed for himself. His only other friend is Pearline (the precocious Camille Winbush), a little girl who inaugurates a little reading club with him, with Ghost Dog in the Oprah role, discussing literature on a park bench: Rashomon, Frankenstein, The Wind in the Willows.
![ghost dog ghost dog](https://render.fineartamerica.com/images/rendered/default/greeting-card/images/artworkimages/medium/2/weimaraner-dog-cora-niele.jpg)
One of his few friends is French-speaking ice-cream salesman Raymond, likeably played by Jarmusch regular Isaach de Bankolé - and Ghost Dog doesn't speak any French. After Ghost Dog takes someone out, it is his custom to wave his gun-plus-silencer around in the air, describing the circular figures an ancient samurai might have done, before returning it to his scabbard. Unlike Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai or John Sturges's The Magnificent Seven, something distinctly whimsical is at work in this grafting of Eastern martial codes on to the gun-for-hire culture of the United States.
![ghost dog ghost dog](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1440723582l/26178292._SY475_.jpg)
As he unsmilingly pads the sidewalk with a mean rolling gait - head, neck and spinal column perfectly straight while each shoulder rocks up in turn almost touching the side of his face - Ghost Dog gets respect from everyone on the street, underscored by a soundtrack from RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan.Īnd yet this gangsta poise coexists with a weirdly playful quality. Forest Whitaker's Ghost Dog is glacially, massively serious in everything he does and says. It is a movie with Jarmusch's intriguing unlocatability of tone. In between tuning up his weaponry and slouching with Antarctic cool around the tough city streets, Ghost Dog studies an ancient samurai text in his ascetic lair, and its lessons and saws are periodically flashed up on the screen as captions.
Ghost dog professional#
A little of the unreadably deadpan in that remark - and something of its flourish - is detectable in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Jarmusch's arresting new serio-comedy about a professional killer, Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker), who lives alone in a rickety loft, and communicates with his single employer, a wheezing Mafia hood, by means of the carrier pigeons he keeps.Īlways, he devoutly follows the way of the samurai warrior.
![ghost dog ghost dog](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/adorable-white-ghost-dog-black-background-halloween-party-theme-happy-fastival-153863555.jpg)
It is now some years since Jim Jarmusch was asked by an interviewer if he was not in some way the white Spike Lee, and he gravely replied that this title would be an "honour".