Hanada Goro, "Number 3 Killer," is hired by gang boss Yabuhara as escort to a mysterious underworld figure-a mission fraught with danger-while Yabuhara busies himself with Hanada's wife. Three assassinations later, the insecure Hanada would seem to be moving up in the ranks, but when he bungles a fourth because a butterfly settles on his telescopic sight at the crucial moment, he finds that failure cannot be tolerated in the underworld. Branded to Kill is an expert yakuza thriller, visually exhilarating ("every moment is one of those moments"-David Chute, Film Comment) while going all the way with Suzuki's brand of eroticism and cruel humor-much of it at the expense of the hero. Hanada, for instance, is able to become sexually aroused only when sniffing boiling rice. "An absurdist thriller that 'de-constructs' the themes and rhetoric of the genre so thoroughly that it ends up resembling Godard's almost contemporary Made in USA." (Tony Rayns)