Branded to Kill (1967)
After a botched assignment, a rice-fetishizing hitman finds himself in conflict with his organization, and one mysterious, dangerous fellow-hitman in particular.
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Tuesday, November 25, 2025
7:00 PM
Japanese New Wave series @ The Moxie
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When Japanese New Wave bad boy Seijun Suzuki delivered this brutal, hilarious, and visually inspired masterpiece to the executives at his studio, he was promptly fired. Branded to Kill tells the ecstatically bent story of a yakuza assassin with a fetish for sniffing steamed rice (the chipmunk-cheeked superstar Joe Shishido) who botches a job and ends up a target himself. This is Suzuki at his most extreme—the flabbergasting pinnacle of his sixties pop-art aesthetic. [Janus]
Starring: Jô Shishido, Mariko Ogawa, Annu Mari
Director: Seijun Suzuki
Language: Japanese
Genre: Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller
"Handsome; mad; haunting."
— Nigel Andrews, Financial Times
"Genuinely fascinating and bizarre."
— Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
"Cult classic? Try one of the greatest films ever made."
— Tara Brady, Irish Times
"Occasionally mystifying, but always witty, inventive and dazzling to look at."
— Geoff Andrew, Time Out
"Reputedly one of Seijun Suzuki's finest works and unquestionably very stylish in its 'Scope framings (Jim Jarmusch copied a few shots from it in his Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai)."
— Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
"'Branded to Kill' is one of those films that feels so far ahead of its time, we may still not have caught up to it. The violence is raw, the sex even more so, and the monochrome photography is flawless."
— Tom Huddleston, Time Out
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