Most critics respond warmly to Jarmusch’s eccentric mixture of hitman thriller, samurai code and hip-hop, finding humour and melancholy in its departures from gangland convention. The praise centres on his handling of odd characters and Forest Whitaker’s performance, whose gravity gives the assassin weight even when his beliefs seem absurd. The reviews also find pleasures in the film’s pauses, visual style and score, with its offbeat rhythms often proving more engaging than its killings.
The spread is fairly wide, however, and the chief disagreement concerns how much substance lies beneath the unlikely combination. Some find the cultural borrowing beguiling; others see ideas left unexplored and too little dramatic tension. Sight and Sound enjoys the warmth and humour but finds the treatment of samurai honour and black urban culture lazy. Variety is more firmly unconvinced, crediting individual scenes and Whitaker while finding the central conceit thin and dramatically inert.