GHOST DOG - THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI

Directed by Jim Jarmusch. Starring Forest Whitaker, John Tormey, Cliff Gorman, Henry Silva.

GIVEN HIP-HOP/film industry synergy, it's hardly surprising that the whole Wu Tang Clan-inspired Samurai-rap assassin ideal should eventually become immortalised on celluloid. Rather more remarkable is the fact that the executor of this vision is Jim Jarmusch rather than say, Ice Cube or Spike Lee or even Mario Van Peebles. And who does the eccentrically-coiffed indie king cast in the lead role? Forest Whitaker, serious actor and director of "sensitive" movies like Waiting To Exhale and Hope Floats.

Original and all as Ghost Dog's central premise is, the Asian-western concept is hardly unprecedented - John Sturges' The Magnificent Seven was, after all, a remake of Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai. This, Jarmusch's first work since 1995's Dead Man (discounting the dirty verite of the Neil Young and Crazy Horse documentary Year Of The Horse), is a tale of urban gunslingers, of loyalty, revenge . . . and carrier pigeons.

Here's the background. Ghost Dog (Whitaker) is a virtuoso hitman with a Wu fetish and an obsession with ancient Samurai philosophies. Under the orders of his "retainer", Italian mobster Louie (the excellent John Tormey), he whacks folk with dispassionate precision, getting paid on the first day of autumn for his year's labours, communicating only by passenger pigeon.

As the story unfolds, we learn the true source of this Dog's unshakable devotion to his master, a devotion which makes it all the tougher when Louie is ordered to have his servant bumped off as a result of unforseen complications in a hit. When it becomes clear to the killer that he's a marked man, all hell breaks loose.

In many ways, Ghost Dog is a parable about tribalism, about codes of honour that are becoming extinct in modern society. Not that these codes are exactly moral - GD does execute his victims without conscience or qualm, and makes the gunplay look mighty sexy to boot.

In fact, this is by far the film maker's most violent work. Nevertheless, Whitaker's assassin possesses nobility and backbone: to live outside the law, Jarmusch seems to be saying, you have to be both brutal and honest.

As usual, director of photography Robbie Muller, who previously distinguished himself on Dead Man as well as various Wim Wenders movies, lends the proceedings a grimy, grainy poetry, while Wu Tang mainman RZA's original score fulfils all the cinematic possibilities predicted by his own records, a haunting amalgam of hip-hop throb and John Carpenter piano.

Never mind the pistols . . . check out the textures. Give or take the odd moment in Night On Earth, Jarmusch hasn't dirtied his bib yet. Ghost Dog effortlessly maintains that standard.

* Peter Murphy