Shadows Lighten
Assuming that Hanada has no particular place to go, he returns to the apartment. He decides to kill her, but the apartment has changed significantly. Hanada's confused intervention has had some effect on Misako. Her apartment is brighter, with a corporate feel. Hanada confronts Misako in a room with a huge desk, a Bakelite phone on it, similar in manner to the jeweller's corporate office. Misako, constantly soaked, followed by rain, showers and fountains, has her own large apartment and a convertible. She is an affluent single professional, who is trapped ιν a despairing situation. Hanada finds a rifle behind a large house plant. Foliage has now suddenly appeared in Misako's apartment, but he puts it back. Hanada refuses to kill Misako, but she pulls out the rifle and threatens Hanada. He warns her not to fire, as the barrel is clogged with soil.
Misako I don't care. I'm already a corpse
He wrestles the gun from her and holds her head tenderly, she finally releases a tear.
A Killer's Crisis
Hanada debates with himself about his professionalism and the disruption Misako is having on him. Stalking in an urban wilderness, Hanada has his Shakespearean moment of existential angst. Not an advisable trait for a cold-hearted killer, but his humanity is struggling to reassert itself. Psychedelia invades! Cartoon style white lines, white birds, white butterfly silhouettes are superimposed on the Hanada's confused face. Hanada is laid out at the side of the road, sleeping. He is framed against massive monolithic scene, concrete structures weighing down of him, perfectly photographed by Nagatsuka.
Back at Misako's apartment, there is now the latest modern convenience for boiling rice! A witty statement of affection! Panning through the clean and bright apartment, there is a bin full of butterflies and the dead Mynah birds. Hanada decides it is time to kill the Yakuza boss.
The Boss! A Killing! Another Killing!
Hanada walks into the boss's apartment, with the intension of killing him, but his wife Mami jumps out playfully, covering his eyes. She thinks it is the boss, she embraces Hanada and kisses him, until she realises who it is! She faints, wearing her chic new clothes!
When she comes round, she gives an exposition of the diamond smuggling ‘plot', pleading for her life. She was ordered to kill him, as she is just another little bird trapped in a gilded cage. She has to follow orders! The theft of some of the diamonds, from smuggled diamond shipment, would drive most Yakuza flicks, but in Branded To Kill, the rationale of such narrative, is irreverent. The reason is not important, just the contract. It is his failure to kill the foreign investigator, is his error that drives Branded To Kill's ‘plot' in final act of film. Misako is implicated as a member of the ‘The Organisation', another skewered Mynah bird in a cage. Through this explanation, Hanada is slumped against the wall his head down, in world weary silence. His wife tries her old game, and re-appears at a door naked. He is motionless, and continues to look down.
Mami We're beasts
We're both like beasts
Hanada shoots her through the gut. He is furious, filled with unprofessional anger.
Hanada We're beasts are we!
Well I'm not!
She crawls into the toilet, where Hanada shoots her again, killing her in beastly fashion! She is dead, her face staring upwards, but the back of her head in the toilet. A hair piece is swirling in the toilet bowl!
Hanada starts to fall apart. He is distraught with anguish and guilt. He's murdered his wife out of rage, his professionalism ebbing. He notices an expensive looking bottle of booze. He is sozzled by the time Yabuhara returns home, but before he can stumble into action, the boss falls through the door, dead! A perfect hole in forehead, the signature kills of the mysterious Client! Hanada stumbles through a monumental urban landscape, boozing and staggering.
Descent Into The Inferno
Hanada returns to Misako's apartment with a hangover, but is confronted with a wondrous vision. Misako poses naked, the shadow of a spinning film projector preserving her dignity, an angel of the movies. It is one of those sublime moments when Suzuki's direction, Kawahara's art design, Nagatsuka's cinematography, the flawless use light and shadow, combined with Mari's acting, produce one of those moments of pure cinema. Self-referential, post-modern, magical! As with much of Branded to Kill, this vision is jolted, twisted, and the angelic Misako evaporates, and she is replaced by a real projected film, showing her in a hellish ordeal. She is tied naked to a post, flames from blow torches flickering all around her. She is like a witch about to be burnt at the stake. The Organisation is interrogating her on why she didn't kill Hanada. She mouths ‘I Love You'! Hanada is desperate, hoping for a clue of her location. She drops naked on a glass floor, flames licking all around her.
Hanada She's dead. Misako's dead
Into The Action
Hanada is drinking, waiting at a bar. The Bakelite phone rings, The Organisation is in touch.
The Organisation You'll take your revenge for the girl you loved?
Go Right ahead
Your reward is nothing
Aren't you ashamed as a professional killer
The waitress laughs at him, pulling out a long string of bubble-gum from her teeth!
The last major action scene now progresses. Hanada drives his car up a causeway, through the sea, to some kind of port/refinery. Goons are blazing away at him as he drives up. He stops the car; gets under it for protection. There are some pulley ropes on the grounds, Suzuki's inventive entertainment over logic theory, in full effect. He grasps one end of the rope on the causeway and ties it to the car. He grips the other end of the rope, and pulls, using the pulley to move the car nearer to the goons, as a shield. This is a physical scene for Jô Shishido, pulling with all his might! He moves close enough to start shooting the gangsters with his rifle, taking one out. He throws his jacket filled with fire crackers, a distraction to entice out the other shooter out and blasts him into hell! He tries to dispatch another hood, but his gun jams. He uses his detached wing mirror, to pin-point the gangster. He rushes back to the car and drives up the causeway squashing his enemy. Hanada now drops his clothes to ground, as two more shooters drive up the causeway, blazing away. He swims alongside the causeway and comes up behind the goons, in super-heroic quick time and shoots them. A great shot of Jô Shishido in his underwear and his pistol, in the bright light of day, sprawled out on the road, relieved to be alive. An American aircraft carrier passes by in the sea, oblivious to the action! Phantom killer Number 1 unexpectedly appears, with several associates. Number 1 speaks with demented death poetry!
Number 1 I will kill you
I'll repay my debt by warning you
That I'll kill you!
He forces Hanada in the car. The mysterious Client from the earlier action scenes is Phantom Killer Number 1, a mystery no more! Phantom Killer Number 1 starts to play Jacobean mortality games with Hanada, laying him under siege in Misako's apartment
Under Siege
Hanada's nerve is tested to the limit with random pot shots and the incessant phone calls of irrational threats from Number 1
Number 1 I wanted to kill you with one shot
But I will kill you so simply
You'll resent it!
Phantom Killer Number 1 likes to intone his crazed philosophy of death, instructing Hanada in its minutiae.
Hanada gazes out on the city landscape searching for his enemy. This is exceptional cinematography by Nagatsuka, piling on the pressure and paranoia, the oppressive weight of concrete and glass. The entire city-scape goes into negative; silence is broken with thousands of babies crying!
Standing on the kitchen table, Hanada is inhaling rice for relief. He looks through his rifle scope on the kitchen table, to see a baby crying! These jarring illogical images are coming hard and fast. Hanada is exhausted through lack of sleep and anxiety, Number 1 rings him to give him more outrageous advice
Number 1 Finished your meal?…Chew your food properly.
You won't be able to fight well if you're under-nourished.
Proteins are what you need. It's good to die as fat as a pig.
This peculiar dialogue is spoken in cool stentorian tones, by the actor Kôji Nanbara, who plays Number 1. It is riotously strange, and electrifying.
Bending Time And Space
Hanada makes a run for it, dashing out of the apartment. Space and time are warped in another fantastical scene that barely lasts a few seconds. Hanada runs down two flights of fire escape stairs, on the high rise where Misako lives. He is abruptly driving her convertible away on the road far below! Time and space are shattered, superhero style. This is a fine example of Suzuki's pure entertainment over logic theme. This brilliantly realised short scene asks strange questions of cinematic space and time, without the use of any special effects. It is beautifully photographed by Nagatsuka, the monstrous angular modernist architecture is the static backdrop to this experiment in space and time. Hanada can now eat some rice in a bar, after his mind bending efforts. He escapes, eats, goes back to the apartment!
Time and space are smashed again. Hanada patiently waits to trick Number 1 into giving away his whereabouts in the city-scape. Number 1 takes a pot-shot into the apartment, Hanada comes swinging, Tarzan style, with a rope holding his feet. He shoots back at Number 1 in a church tower, the bell ringing with ricochet. Hanada gets to his feet with the idea of chasing after number 1, but the master killer is already at the door, pointing his pistol! Phantom Killer Number 1 is also a master of time and space; he miraculously covers a large space in a couple of seconds, as if by teleportation.
The New Lodger, Phantom Killer No.1!
Preposterous absurdity explodes when Phantom Killer Number 1 moves in with Hanada, to give him a lesson in consummate professionalism. This scene works like long Monty Python sketch! Phantom Killer Number 1 sleeps with his eyes open! Pisses himself in his suit! Ironic S&M motifs abound as they are tied together, so they don't kill each other. Suzuki satirises Number 1's obsessive attention to professional detail, making a mockery of his masculinity. When they take a delivery of a package at the door, tied together, the postman is very unsettled! They even go out for meal, before Number 1 finally disappears during the meal. Hanada looks for him in the toilet, but then another jarring surreal moment detonates. Instead of finding Number 1, he opens the toilet door to confront man with facial burns. There is a hairpiece swirling in the toilet!
Mami We're beasts
We'll die like beasts
