Branded to Kill

Surreal B-movie from Seijun Suzuki at the top of his game, resulting in his dismissal and subsequent blacklisting as a director. This avant-garde cult classic film noir follows the world's third-ranked hitman Goro Hanada (Joe Shishido) who misses a target, failing the job, and has a contract put out on him as a consequence. Spiralling into a paranoid world fueled by booze and the aphrodisiac properties of the smell of cooking rice, Hanada's sanity slips as he tries to evade the legendary Number One Killer.

An employee of the Nikkatsu Company, who wanted him to churn out generic low budget crime pics, Suzuki had been warned by the studio to "play it straight", instructions he continually ignored. Battling the studio, Suzuki nevertheless made 40 films in just twelve years, culminating in Branded to Kill - for which he was promptly fired. The film has gone on to be acclaimed by the likes of John Woo, Chan-Wook Park, Jim Jarmusch and Quentin Tarantino.

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