Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

Anyone searching for the pulse of independent film should not miss what Jim Jarmusch calls his “kind of Samurai gangster hip-hop Eastern Western.” Forest Whitaker plays a contract killer who adheres to the tenets of an 18th century samurai handbook. His best friend is a French-speaking Haitian ice cream vendor (Isaach de Bankole) who does not understand a word he says. His enemies are twilight-year Italian-American hoods whose boss (Henry Silva) watches TV cartoons. This violent, often wildly funny spin on Sam Peckinpah’s infatuation with men on the brink of extinction is set on seedy Sopranos turf and fueled by music from Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA, “the Thelonious Monk of hip-hop.”