Pistol Opera (2002)

In the late 60's, Seijun Suzuki was fired by Nikkatsu Studios because his flamboyant stylistic experiments were rendering the B-movie Yakuza flicks he'd been hired to churn out unintelligible to audiences. In the 1990's, however, Suzuki was rediscovered by a new generation of enthusiasts, and his more audacious projects, like Tokyo Drifter and Branded To Kill, are now considered classics precisely because they transcend their humble beginnings as genre movies. Pistol Opera, made more than 30 years after Branded To Kill, finds the septuagenarian Suzuki freed from the constraints of budget and genre. It is the fullest flowering of his uniquely mind-boggling visual and narrative style. Its dreamlike narrative works on at least two levels of reality. The main story follows the gorgeous heroine Miyuki, who wears a black robe and high-heeled boots on the job, as she battles her fellow assassins in a series of ritualized and often hilarious duels. A second, much more dreamlike story line is made up of Miyuki's interactions with her boss, a mysterious veiled woman who hands out assassination assignments (and with whom she has a relationship that is both sexual and violent), and the elderly woman and adolescent girl who live in a traditional Japanese dwelling with them. Both story lines play out within hallucinatory visual compositions that are drenched in garish colors and conjure up abstract, otherworldly locales where the line between reality and dreams dissolves. Pistol Opera is a dazzling achievement by a completely original cinematic pioneer who is finally getting his due four decades after his career began. ~ Tom Vick, All Movie Guide