Jarmusch, with his aesthetic density, manages to direct it with a balance that never loses its sense of irony when it questions the various cultural stereotypes that build his dialectical discourse on the master and the vassal. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 7/10 | Aug 5, 2024

Its tone is elusive, existing somewhere between nostalgic, melancholic, resigned, and optimistic. Above all else, though, it’s truly unlike any film you’ve seen before, operating as a functional pastiche of so many great works of art.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 3, 2024

It almost feels like we’re in another world: Jarmusch [blurs] out everything else so the movie becomes a meditation on the impulse to moralize one’s misdoings by subscribing to rigid definitions of “honor.” [...] A bone-deep reflective masterpiece.

| Nov 25, 2023

what might sound like an ordinary gangster picture is in fact a rich amalgam of crisscrossing genres, where East meets West and culture itself follows more than one Way.

| Nov 17, 2023

Jarmusch mixes the two styles for a very street-level appeal...

| Mar 2, 2023

The film's calculated weirdness can't redeem a stale story.

| May 27, 2022

Ghost Dog is one of Jim Jarmusch's coolest features in an oeuvre featuring some of the slickest characters ever. We may not need to understand everything we see, but that's exactly the point.

| Jul 27, 2021

Another Jim Jarmusch title, another opportunity to add some eccentric twists to a fairly ordinary story.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 27, 2020

Freely mixes and matches Bushido philosophy, Mafia and samurai flicks, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, and lo-fi hip-hop into a sly and dreamy comedy about role-playing.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Nov 24, 2020

Ghost Dog has retained all of the cool, the quirk, the profundity it captured in a bottle in 1999... One gets the sense that never before Ghost Dog could this film have been possible, and, never since.

| Nov 21, 2020

The film is a rare oddity in that is very much of its period, yet is absolutely timeless. It's not just that the poetry Jarmusch pulls from Hagakure ... it's that the film constantly creates a simultaneous sense of something ending and beginning.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Nov 11, 2020

You don't have to "get" Ghost Dog to enjoy it; it's an experience more open to interpretation.

| Jan 18, 2020

Even when aware of all the strange, disparate elements, it still surprises.

| Aug 25, 2018

Jarmusch's original film, which deconstructs the mobster genre as seen through the eyes of a Samurai, is by turn eccentric, mysterious, and mythical, defying viewers expectations

| Original Score: B | Feb 3, 2011

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 7, 2008

One of the coolest movies to come down the pike in years.

| Original Score: A+ | Feb 13, 2008

At once a tribute to traditional notions of honour, loyalty, friendship and professionalism, and a stylish, ironic pastiche inspired by the likes of Melville and Suzuki, it's very funny, insightful, and highly original.

| Jun 24, 2006

Jarmusch blends these disparate themes into a cohesive film that combines humor and truly unique characters with Eastern philosophy, mobster flick and shoot-'em-up western.

| Original Score: B- | Apr 9, 2005

Visually creative film with a remarkable use of color and music.

| Jan 24, 2005

I can scarcely think of ways to improve this engrossing, original, near-brilliant production.

| Original Score: B+ | May 22, 2003