“Ghost Dog” is, now that I’ve reduced my estimations of “Full Metal Jacket” and “The Merchant of Venice”, the best movie I’ve seen since I watched “Trainspotting” a month and a half ago.

Ghost Dog is a hitman working for the Italian mafia, and he’s a perfect professional. And also kinda quirky, as he follows the ancient Samurai Code, devoting his life completely to one of the mafia captains. However, after the leaders of this mafia clan uses him to liquidate one of their own, they decide that they have to avenge themselves on him, for some reason.

It can be a little hard to understand why the hell they’d want to kill their most efficient assassint, but as the preceeding quote from the Samurai Code says (the movie is partitioned by these quotes, and every quote is quite efficiently tied to the following events), “Among the maxims on Lord Naoshige’s wall, there was this one: “Matters of great concern should be treated lightly.” Master Ittei commented, “Matters of small concern should be treated seriously.”

Anyway, this movie is almost perfect, combining as it does style with substance. A great story, great acting, an übercool assassin, a brilliant soundtrack (I bet even those who normally dislike hiphop have to enjoy this one), and some really werid characters.

9.5/10. (It was actually way better than I remembered it to be.)