Product Details

• Released on: 2004-01-20
• Rating: Unrated
• Formats: Subtitled, NTSC, Import
• Original language: Japanese
• Subtitled in: English
• Running time: 112 minutes

Video Details
As powerful and energetic as ever, 78-year old director Seijun Suzuki, creates a stunningly lurid, extreme tale of a woman assassin’s (portrayed by new sensation Makiko Esumi) surreal rise in the criminal underworld. Thirty-three years later, this master of the pulp thriller reworks his own BRANDED TO KILL into a totally new, jaw-dropping experience! The original BRANDED TO KILL (1967, KOROSHI NO RAKUIN, starring Jo Shishido, Mariko Ogawa, Anne Mari) is the stylish action movie that has been the subject of homage from world-class directors such as John Woo, Quentin Tarantino, and Jim Jarmusch. Its eccentric, eye-popping images and extreme action is fast earning PISTOL OPERA a worldwide cult following.

Review
In the late 60's, Seijun Suzuki was fired by Nikkatsu Studios because his flamboyant stylistic experiments were rendering the B-movie Yakuza flicks he'd been hired to churn out unintelligible to audiences. In the 1990's, however, Suzuki was rediscovered by a new generation of enthusiasts, and his more audacious projects, like Tokyo Drifter and Branded To Kill, are now considered classics precisely because they transcend their humble beginnings as genre movies. Pistol Opera, made more than 30 years after Branded To Kill, finds the septuagenarian Suzuki freed from the constraints of budget and genre. It is the fullest flowering of his uniquely mind-boggling visual and narrative style. Its dreamlike narrative works on at least two levels of reality. The main story follows the gorgeous heroine Miyuki, who wears a black robe and high-heeled boots on the job, as she battles her fellow assassins in a series of ritualized and often hilarious duels. A second, much more dreamlike story line is made up of Miyuki's interactions with her boss, a mysterious veiled woman who hands out assassination assignments (and with whom she has a relationship that is both sexual and violent), and the elderly woman and adolescent girl who live in a traditional Japanese dwelling with them. Both story lines play out within hallucinatory visual compositions that are drenched in garish colors and conjure up abstract, otherworldly locales where the line between reality and dreams dissolves. Pistol Opera is a dazzling achievement by a completely original cinematic pioneer who is finally getting his due four decades after his career began. ~ Tom Vick, All Movie Guide

On the DVD
Full color interior sleeve art
Selected filmography/biography
Original theatrical trailer

Customer Reviews

Impressive amalgamation of styles.
Picture Sergio Leonne crossed with John Woo and then add a big dash of Martha Grahmm.

A visually unique film, a remake of Suzuki's 1967 film Branded to Kill, which (obliquely) tells the story of a young hit-person named Stray Cat (Brian Setzer jokes intentionally witheld) who has been forced into a killing tournament with other ranked assasins.

The aspect of this film that holds it in such sharp relief from others in the genre is the visualization. Suzuki use a few conventional setups, but on the whole the film shows an expresionist representation of the story taking place. There are even portions of Pistol Opera where dance becomes the intergral means of communicating plot to a viewer.

While it can be a bit confusing at times (I still don't get the deal with the bulldozer and the poppies) and has a taste of being filmed in a hurry (there was one scene where I stopped counting boom shots around 10 and a very important scene where someone runs into a "tree" and nearly knocks the flimsy thing over), these are nitpicks.

I just finished watching this film and wanted to write this while the experiance is fresh in my mind. My advice is to relax. If a story element has you frowning, give it a minute and things should become clear. Even if it doesn't, don't worry about it. This is a rad flick, a cool story with awesome visual impact.

Then watch it a second time and see if you can figure out what was going on with that dang bulldozer.

Suzuki certainly hasn't mellowed...
Pistol Opera is a difficult movie to watch. Scenes do not connect in a standard linear fashion. Movements are stylized, drawing more inspiration from modern dance movements than Tarentino-esque action flicks. Makiko-chan makes a compelling heroine, but we never get any insight on her character or any others. And the tempo of the movie slows towards the end, repeating certain shots, increasing the tedium and the desire for a more meaningful conclusion, which never comes.
Why four stars then? Suzuki is a master of this kind of cinematic tone-poem, and this is probably his most unrestrained work yet. It was just this bizarre vision which got him black-listed back in the 60's, and it comforting that he has lost none of his confidence in his own extremely unconventional style. Often visually stunning and filmed in beautiful primary colors (as opposed to "Branded to Kill", the 'prequel' which was in B&W), "Pistol Opera" gets off on its own audaciousness and if you're ready for a REALLY different trip to the movies, then maybe you're ready for this baby