In creating his hitman movie, Jim Jarmusch has made both a standard lone-gunman-hitman-honorable-revenge movie and an artistic film that transcends the normal boundaries of the hitman "genre." The boundaries and bonuses of this film can be best seen when it is compared with other films that I would say fit the genre: Luc Besson's action spectacular, The Professional, and Brandon Lee's breakout/final film, The Crow.
At first glance, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai seems to share a lot with The Professional. Both films feature highly trained assassins in modern New York (we presume that Ghost Dog is in New York) who seem to live for little more than their work. They both train relentlessly, Jean Reno as Leon - a perfectionist who knows little more than the art of the kill, and Forrest Whittaker as Ghost Dog - another perfectionist who seems to know a lot about both the art of the kill and "the way of the samurai." What separates the two, however, tells us volumes about the films.
Ghost Dog is a well-rounded man, despite the impression we get at the beginning of the film that he is as solitary and single-minded as Leon. He reads, he thinks, he meditates, and he has some sort of psychic connection with his best friend, a Haitian ice-cream salesman who speaks only French. On the other hand, Leon's best friend is a plant. What separates the films, however, is the progression the characters take. Leon's investment in life begins when he meets Mathilda (a pre-pubescent Natalie Portman). He "grows roots" and begins to think about life outside the life of an assassin. Ghost Dog, on the other hand, envelopes his life in his code, in the Way of the Samurai that he reads constantly. He is single-minded and almost unchanging. In that light, Leon seems to be a more sympathetic character. However, Ghost Dog has something else working for him: revenge.
The Crow's Eric Draven has to be the unassailable king of revenge. The horrors that he and his fiancee encountered in that film give him all the sympathy he needs. We revel, as audiences cheered for the coming of the furies, as he sticks Tin-Tin, blows up T-Bird, overdoses FunBoy, and so on. Again, Ghost Dog doesn't quite measure up to the measure imposed by previous films. Eric's pure revenge and vicious elimination of ne'er-do-wells is gleefully glib when compared to Ghost Dog's unemotional assaults. But Ghost Dog is more about loyalty, about the code, than about revenge.
So, in the end, it is unfair to put this movie beside other hitman/revenge movies, because it's got its own logic. It doesn't demand the vicious revenge of unjust deaths, and at the same time it doesn't show us the story of a man who grows out of his solitary life to embrace something more. Instead, Ghost Dog finds a third register altogether, one I would argue is really only reserved for independents and art-house fare. It tells a story that doesn't have to fit the cliché.
Because Ghost Dog definitely isn't about fitting into the Hollywood register. The way Jarmusch uses the hip-hop music from the RZA and a multitude of superimposition shots gives the film a lyrical, almost contemplative feel. The interludes of passages from Ghost Dog's "way of the samurai" book help keep the film away from the standard Hollywood techniques, as does its refusal to glorify death. Instead, the deaths are disturbing and silent, hardly the splatter-filled bursts that we see in Lethal Weapon or the like. What sets the film aside is its rhythm, its visuals; Ghost Dog: the way of the independent.