Branded to Kill Blu-ray & DVD (Criterion)
RELEASE DATE: December 13, 2011
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 (chipmunk-cheeked superstar Joe Shishido) with a fetish for sniffing boiled rice 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. Black and white Japanese cinema has never been this colorful!
Check out the trailer.
– New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
– Video piece featuring new interviews with director Seijun Suzuki and assistant director Masami Kuzuu
– Interview with Suzuki from 1997
– New interview with actor Joe Shishido
– Original theatrical trailer
– New and improved English subtitle translation
– PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic and historian Tony Rayns, author of Branded to Thrill: The Delirious Cinema of Suzuki Seijun, and a statement by the film’s art director, Sukezo Kawahara
