Cinema: Samurai Cineaste

Jim Jarmusch, the solitary warrior of indie films, may have a hit in the stark, haunting Ghost Dog

He's a man in black, alone but not lonely, pursuing a treacherous trade, doing business with lethal idiots who understand his methods but not his magic. He is Ghost Dog, a philosophical black gunman who runs afoul of the mobsters who employ him in Jim Jarmusch's niftily quirky Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. And yes, he is Jarmusch as well--a filmmaker who, since his 1984 Stranger Than Paradise, has pretty much defined the spirit of the truly independent American film. Ghost Dog is talking about himself and his Mafia contact, but he might be speaking of Jarmusch when he...

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