As a big Jim Jarmusch fan I am quite sad to say, that Ghost Dog is the worst Jarmusch movie since his debut, Permanent Vacation (which, out of all his movies, pays most resemblance to Ghost Dog). Stylistically there's nothing wrong with the film; the cinematography is beautiful and The RZA's hip hop score fits the movie perfectly. The usual Jarmusch themes of alienation and chance encounters are explored, although in somewhat flat and uninspired way. But even that does not fully explain, why I have such mixed feelings towards the film.
Although the characters portrayed in Jarmusch's films are usually more than a little eccentric, there still is certain universality to them, making the viewer able to relate with these strange people. This is not the case with Ghost Dog. Ghost Dog, the main character, is so far off this plane, that his actions and words left me cold, and I didn't care what happened to him (as I cared about the main characters of Down By Law and Dead Man, for example). This is by no means Forest Whitaker's fault; he carries out his role perfectly, but this role was written so that there's no way to relate to his character (the only exceptions are his scenes with the French-speaking ice-cream salesman). One can argue that this is a deliberate choice made by Jarmusch, but that doesn't make the film any better. Jarmusch's goal seems to have been to make a stylish crossbreed of a samurai film and a gangster film. In this he succeeds perfectly, but by making the protagonist a stone-cold hitman who follows the samurai ethos, he makes it impossible to understand him or to have any sympathy for him (unless the viewer himself is a samurai hitman). So in the end of the film I was left feeling just as uncaring as the character of Ghost Dog felt.
Perhaps one of the reasons for my disappointment is that I'm beginning to grow tired of these lonely outsiders Jarmusch constantly displays (although he's great at doing it). I think his next film shouldn't be less like Ghost Dog and Permanent Vacation, and more like Down by Law and Night on Earth. In those two films he explored the full scale of emotions, from alienation and loneliness to friendship and love. In Ghost Dog we have only the former two.
Although the characters portrayed in Jarmusch's films are usually more than a little eccentric, there still is certain universality to them, making the viewer able to relate with these strange people. This is not the case with Ghost Dog. Ghost Dog, the main character, is so far off this plane, that his actions and words left me cold, and I didn't care what happened to him (as I cared about the main characters of Down By Law and Dead Man, for example). This is by no means Forest Whitaker's fault; he carries out his role perfectly, but this role was written so that there's no way to relate to his character (the only exceptions are his scenes with the French-speaking ice-cream salesman). One can argue that this is a deliberate choice made by Jarmusch, but that doesn't make the film any better. Jarmusch's goal seems to have been to make a stylish crossbreed of a samurai film and a gangster film. In this he succeeds perfectly, but by making the protagonist a stone-cold hitman who follows the samurai ethos, he makes it impossible to understand him or to have any sympathy for him (unless the viewer himself is a samurai hitman). So in the end of the film I was left feeling just as uncaring as the character of Ghost Dog felt.
Perhaps one of the reasons for my disappointment is that I'm beginning to grow tired of these lonely outsiders Jarmusch constantly displays (although he's great at doing it). I think his next film shouldn't be less like Ghost Dog and Permanent Vacation, and more like Down by Law and Night on Earth. In those two films he explored the full scale of emotions, from alienation and loneliness to friendship and love. In Ghost Dog we have only the former two.