GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI (1999) **1/2 Jim Jarmusch's foray into the action-packed world of wiseguys and strange allegiance. Of course, being Jim, it's not that simple. As the possessor of a brain that renders his work even more eclectic when not derivative (and when has it ever been derivative?), he sees no reason that Oriental philosophy, Chinese food, pigeons-lots of pigeons, gangster's landlords, Samurai swords, water pipes, ice cream trucks, and cartoons shouldn't all be part of it. Cartoons, in fact, seem to be interior to all of it. Jim's gangsters are a special kind, for cinema: dull-witted, incompetent, and utterly clueless. There's a reason these guys end up in poorly painted rooms sitting there with their jowls hanging out. They do vary somewhat, and Cliff Gorman is one of the funniest characters that I've seen in years. To live outside the law you must be honest? To live outside the law you merely have to be breaking the law. And live, which is the tricky part. It is of course possible, though certainly not necessary and maybe not even advisable, to live outside the law honestly, and Jim portrays this as allegiance to a willfully incomprehensible credo, one that is probably right. The glory appears in purity, and penance unnecessary in the face of cosmological retribution. So it's a karma flick? You might think that way, but the philosophy is kind of a cartoon construct, also. Not in a bad way, but in a way that would set up simple, if not immediately comprehensible, statements, for maximum effect. Forest Whitaker has no difficulty projecting himself into, and bringing vital elements back out of, the further reaches of what appears to be at least five or six dimensions. He raises the philosophical question: when an individual attacks an organization, doesn't the individual invariably win? (for believing something devoutly, against others who can only believe vaguely or, at best, collectively) Funny. My reaction at the end of the film is that Jarmusch is calming down as the years roll by. Then I realized that I'd just witnessed a massacre. But the manner in which it was presented was less overtly eccentric, only necessarily so.
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