Synopsis
Branded to Kill (殺しの烙印, 1967) is a Japanese noir thriller directed by Seijun Suzuki you can watch online on iFILM, starring Jô Shishido as a hitman undone by a single misfire.
Hanada ranks third among Japan's professional killers — a position he's satisfied with. He has money, a sleek apartment, a beautiful wife, and one bizarre fixation: the smell of boiling rice sends him into a trance. Then a job goes wrong. A mysterious, death-obsessed woman he becomes entangled with may be the reason the number-one hitman in Japan has now been sent to eliminate him.
Suzuki made the film with such deliberate contempt for conventional narrative that Nikkatsu Studio fired him on the spot after its release. Decades later it became a cornerstone of Japanese avant-garde cinema. The plot barely holds together, and that's the point — it's a film built on mood, jazz-inflected rhythm and strange close-ups rather than story logic. Stream Branded to Kill (1967) online on iFILM.
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