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63
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27 Dresses
29
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Final Season, The
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43
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92
Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
92
There Will Be Blood
85
Savages, The
84
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
83
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
81
Juno
81
Bamako
78
Starting Out in the Evening
77
Nanking
74
Orphanage, The
71
Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, The
71
Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)
70
Lars and the Real Girl
69
Charlie Wilson's War
68
Business of Being Born, The
68
Delirious
68
War Dance
65
Great Debaters, The
64
Cloverfield
63
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
63
11th Hour, The
63
Hannah Takes the Stairs
60
I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With
57
Romulus, My Father
57
Teeth
55
Resurrecting the Champ
53
Music Within
52
Hollywood Dreams
51
Golden Compass, The
49
Good Night, The
47
Bella
47
Lions for Lambs
47
27 Dresses
46
Reservation Road
44
Nina's Heavenly Delights
43
Youth Without Youth
43
Final Season, The
41
Mad Money
41
First Sunday
39
Alvin and the Chipmunks
39
P.S. I Love You
38
Trailer Park Boys: The Movie
37
P2
32
Untraceable
30
Over Her Dead Body
30
Cover
29
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
24
One Missed Call
15
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
7
Hottie and the Nottie, The
xx
Moondance Alexander
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Artisan Entertainment
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for strong violence and language
Starring
Forest Whitaker,
John Tormey,
Cliff Gorman,
and
Henry Silva
Jarmusch's spiritual gangster film tells the story of an inner-city hit man (Whitaker) who lives on a rooftop, training himself as a samurai in the strictest sense. He communicates primarily by carrier pigeon, while remaining loyal to a gangster (Tormey) who once saved his life.
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Jim Jarmusch
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Jim Jarmusch
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: August 15, 2000
Video: August 15, 2000
Theatrical: March 3, 2000
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
116 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA / France / Germany / Japan |

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
Baltimore Sun
Ann Hornaday
A thoroughly absorbing, even transfixing, journey to a future that may already be upon us.
100
San Francisco Chronicle
Bob Graham
Jim Jarmusch has come up with something strange and amazing.

91
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
A purely cinematic experience. You've got to see it, in other words, to understand.
90
LA Weekly
Ernest Hardy
Laced with brilliantly knotted ideas on race, masculinity and cults of violence.

90
Los Angeles Times
Eric Harrison
It's a nearly pitch-perfect melding of genres, influences and modes of expression--it's the first Mafia movie for the hip-hop age.

90
Film.com
Peter Brunette
What makes the film so special is that while tickling your postmodern funnybone, it never forgets to make you care for its characters, in a welcome, and almost traditional way.

89
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
It's the kind of movie you wish you had more time to absorb and could see more than once before reviewing.

88
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
Perversely funny.

83
Entertainment Weekly
Ty Burr
The result has the dingy grace of pigeons flying across an urban wasteland.

80
Dallas Observer
Gregory Weinkauf
This infusion of warrior philosophy is the gas in Ghost Dog's tank, and Jarmusch pumps it up for maximum octane throughout.

80
Time
Richard Corliss
Niftily quirky.
75
TNT RoughCut
Spencer H. Abbott
An ultra-violent cinematic rendering which will appeal to those moviegoers who like their action dramas laced with nice touches of meta-physicality and left-of-center humor.
75
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Weirdly intriguing.

75
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Whitaker's acting is highly creative and Jarmusch's filmmaking is as elegant and original as ever.

75
New York Post
Jonathan Foreman
So filled with amusing, idiosyncratic touches and unexpectedly charming characters that you mostly don't mind its excesses.
75
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
It's fun, but not obvious fun.
75
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
(Jarmusch's) most accessible film after "Night on Earth," yet it's still elliptical and enigmatic.

70
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
It's beautifully cast and filmed (cinematography by the matchless Robby Muller) and often quite moving, despite the fact that most of the characters are never developed much beyond mythic or parodic prototypes.

70
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
Every minute he's on screen, Whitaker makes Ghost Dog worth watching.

67
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Paula Nechak
(Jarmusch) seems...to introduce gratuitous bloodshed that is out of sync with the engaging, offbeat tempo and dark, comedic moral fable that has come before.

63
Boston Globe
Jay Carr
Best when it's playful, toying with the fact that the Mafia has in a single generation been transmogrified from myth to joke.

63
USA Today
Staff [Not Credited]
The movie is still too solemn.
60
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
A movie as laconic as its hero, Ghost Dog is nonetheless diminished by its most un-Zen-like attachment to this underlying sentimentality.

60
The New York Times
Dana Stevens
There is a lot of violence, but not much action; a plot involving vengeance, jealousy and double-crossing, but not a great deal of suspense.

52
Mr. Showbiz
Michael Atkinson
Likable, but frustratingly lazy, Ghost Dog has coolness running all through it, but little substance.
50
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
Jarmusch has never seemed quite this baffling -- or quite this dull.
50
Slate
David Edelstein
Am I the only one who finds the substance of this movie repulsive?

50
TV Guide
Ken Fox
Points for an interesting concept; demerits for the dull execution.

40
Variety
Todd McCarthy
The gambits in Ghost Dog seem simply like literary and cinematic games devoid of any larger meaning.

30
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
It's too bloody to be funny and too silly to be dramatic and too self-indulgent to be anything other than what it is, one more bad movie.

12
San Francisco Examiner
Wesley Morris
It's too cryptic and unfulfilled to serve as a tool for anything beyond its own obfuscation.


The average user rating for this movie is 8.8 (out of 10) based on 21 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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