Review: Ghost Dog

A mild ride looms. It looks like action will commence at any moment, but those moments turn into a sensible withdrawal or a short book review.

Ghost Dog is a samurai, because he read a book on how to be a samurai. This makes no sense in the modern USA, so he must create sense out of it.

The film quotes extensively from the Hagakure - a book written by a clerk on how to be a samurai. The clerk began as a samurai, and wanted to ritualistically kill himself on the death of his master; but his master had outlawed the practice because looking after the wives and children of dead samurai became expensive. So the samurai became a clerk and wrote this guide to being a samurai.

The book makes very little sense. It opens by reminding the reader that a samurai should feel ashamed if anyone saw them read, so the book must be read in secret, put into practice instantly, and then given away or burnt (again, in secret).

Despite the author's complete lack of combat experience, he keeps mythical standards for samurai.

Even if a samurai's head were to be cut off, he should still be able to perform one last action.

Death does not provide an excuse for slacking off the job. Ghost Dog holds to these mythical standards, reinterpreting old Japanese ideas to fit his current life. He practices daily with a samurai sword, but kills with a hand gun with a silencer attached.

The way of the samurai is to be found in absolute devotion to his master.

Ghost Dog finds a master in a local mafia-man, but this makes no sense either. This isn't the 60's, the classic Italian mafia don't do what they do in films. But they have to make sense of themselves as they adjust to the modern era.

The film loops around heavy-handed themes.

• Animals stare as if enchanted, foreshadowing a magical event which never comes.
• Unworthy people watch television. All television shows are cartoons, depicting something which Ghost Dog later does. The unworthy bask in false imagery, while Ghost Dog enjoys reality.
• Death comes fast and quietly. No blood-spatters or gore. Ghost Dog kills with three bullets and people slump down quietly.

Bigotries against minorities, women, and animals are not explored. They sit there as plain facts.

The film ends three times. First with Ghost Dog smiling (an homage to the French Film, Le Samouraï). Second with the rebirth of the mafia as a young woman turns off her cartoon. And third, with a girl reading Ghost Dog's copy of the Hagakure.