殺しの烙印 - Branded to Kill aka Koroshi no rakuin (1967) Surreal Japanese Yakuza Noir

Directed by Seijun Suzuki. 

Written by Hachiro Guryu, Mitsutoshi Ishigami, Takeo Kimura, Chûsei Sone, and Atsushi Yamatoya. Cinematography by Kazue Nagatsuka and Music by Naozumi Yamamoto.

This plays bit like a Japanese version of a Spaghetti Western. Instead of gunfighters vying to be the fastest draw, you have hitmen / assassins vying to be the number one ranked assassin. 

The film stars  Jô Shishido as Goro Hanada, Ogawa Mariko as Mami Hanada, Mari Annu as Misako Nakajo, Tamagawa Isao as Michihiko Yabuhara, Minami Hiroshi as Gihei Kasuga, Mariko Ogawa as Mami Hanada, Annu Mari as Misako Nakajo, and Koji Nanbara as Susumu Orui.

Joe Shishido is Goro Hanada. He is the number three yakuza assassin. 

Ogawa Mariko as Mami Hanada and Joe Shishido as Goro Hanada

Minami Hiroshi as Gihei Kasuga

We first see him and his wife Mami Hanada when they get picked up at the airport by Kasuga, an ex assassin now a lowly cab driver who likes to drink, sent to get them by crime boss Michihiko Yabuhara. While driving Hanada to his rendezvous with Yabuhara at his club, Kasuga asks Hanada to help him get back into the biz. Yabuhara's first job is for Hanada and Kasuga to escort an un-named client from Sagami Beach to Nagano. 

Kashuga and Hanada with Tamagawa Isao as Michihiko Yabuhara

After Hanada and Kasuga leave Yabuhara seduces Mami. Mami, likes to flirt, have sex, and to walk around nude (BTW just like my wife in the first 36 of the 45 years of marriage, lol) that is her kink, Hanada's kink is that he gets aroused by the smell of boiling rice then has sex with Mami. Mami is sick of the smell of rice. So there is the opening for Yabuhara. 

Yabuhara seducing Mami

Hanada and Kasuga arrive at the place they are supposed to pick up a 1959 Chrysler Saratoga. The keys are supposed to be hidden under the bumper. Hanada and Kasuga can not find the keys what Hanada finds is the drivers side door open, the "missing" keys in the ignition and the dead body of the yakuza that dropped it off laying on the floorboards of the back seat. 

The keys are still in the ignition

The dead driver

So now they know somebody knows all about their current job. The dump the body and pick up their client at Sagami Beach. They at one point think they are being followed. Hanada tells the client to sit low in the backseat, and they go into the standard evasive routine which is to hit the brakes and skid the Saratoga broadside to use the car as a sort of bulwark, fortified position. Both Hanada and Kasuga assume firing positions but the car they thought was tailing them turns out to be a bunch of teens joyriding around with their music blaring.

They swerve right around the Saratoga, and disappear into the night. They continue to head to their destination, Nagano.

Kasuga takes a hit off a pint bottle of booze, to steady is nerves Hanada chastises him for it.

Hanada, Kasuga, and their client get into two ambushes before reaching Nagano. In the first they wreck the Saratoga and Kasuga kills Ko the number four assassin but dies in the process. 

The client also proves to be mysteriously proficient, killing three of the ambushers each with a neat bullet hole directly in the enter of their foreheads. 

In the second ambush Hanada sets the number two assassin Sakura on fire who, still determined to kill the client, runs towards the 1961 Hino Renault 4CV Deluxe that they are now using. The client coolly steps out and shoots him down.

Hanada, drops off the client in Nagano, and is driving in a rainstorm when the Hino Renault blows a radiator hose. He gets a lift from Misako, a strange woman (who looks like a "goth" and wants to die and lives in a house filled with dead butterflies). 

Yabuhara's next assignment is for Hanada to assassinate four men. The first two hits are quite stylistic in their planning and execution. The first is a sniper shot from a "spectacular" billboard. ("Spectaculars" were attention grabbers with sometimes moving parts or gimmicks one of the most famous was the Camel Cigarette billboard in NYC's Times Square that blew steam smoke rings.) 

The spectacular in Branded To Kill has a lighter that has a top that flips open for a period of time. Hanada must time his shot to when the top flips open so that he can aim at the station platform across the tracks. Hanada also has to contend with incoming trains. 

Victim #1

The second kill involves an optometrist, a sink, and plumbing. 

Victim #2

 

The third is staged as part of an office massacre where Hanada escapes on an advertising balloon. The fourth man is identified to Hanada by the girl with the "death wish" Misako, who explains that she will escort a foreign customs inspector past a certain location at a exact time where Hanada must make a perfect precision rifle shot. All goes as planned until just as Hanada pulls the trigger it all goes Noirsville when a butterfly lands on the end of the barrel causing the shot to deflect a fraction and kill a bystander instead.

All goes as planned until just as Hanada pulls the trigger, it all goes Noirsville when a butterfly lands on the end of the barrel causing the shot to deflect a fraction and kill a bystander instead.

The sniper shot must take place as Misako escorts target past this far corner.

Misako tells him that because of this failure he will loose his ranking and be marked for death.

Marked for death

Going back to his apartment to get ready to leave Japan he is shot by his wife Mami. The bullet is stopped by his belt buckle and knocks the wind out of him, but Mami thinking him dead sets fire to the apartment and flees.

Noirsville

Seijun Suzuki's film is both beautifully stylistic, surreal, and at times a bit over the top ridiculous. Case in point to prove what a bad ass assassin the number one is to Hanada, he pees his pants rather than go to the bathroom. OK lol. That is dedication to your assignment. 

Another sequence has Hanada exposed on a long concrete quay where he is to be assassinated but he foils the attempt by diving under his car where he finds a convenient rope with a hook which he uses to pull the car to a sheltered spot where he can kill the snipers.

Check it out it reminded me of the excesses used in the latter phases the Spaghetti Westerns post Leone went through before they fizzled out. 6.5-7/10.