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Branded to Kill

Original title: Koroshi no rakuin · Turkish title: Öldürme Arzusu
1967 · 1 h 31 min
Directed by Seijun Suzuki
ActionCrimeDrama

Cast

Jō Shishido Mariko Ogawa Koji Nanbara

Credits

Written by: Seijun Suzuki

Plot

Goro Hanada, the number three hitman in Japan, who is excited by the smell of boiling rice, takes on a job that goes wrong when a butterfly lands on his gun barrel. He is then hunted by the mysterious number one killer, and must fight for his life in a world of increasingly bizarre events. Seijun Suzuki's 1967 film was so strange that the studio fired him, and it has since become a cult classic.

Sinekatalog’s take

Seijun Suzuki's absurdist hitman film, with its rice-sniffing hero, is hallucinatory pop-art noir. Stylish and bizarre, it got him fired but made him a cult hero of Japanese cinema.Sinekatalog’s own editorial review – not a user or critic quote.

Ratings

IMDb: 7.2 / 10 (11,304 votes)
IMDb rating and vote count from the IMDb ratings dataset (October 2026). Scores change over time.

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