Ghost Dog is a very boring movie about a hitman betrayed by his employers. Despite the basic outline, it is not an action movie. Jarmusch takes the trite, overused plot and keeps it trite and overused, without adding anything to it. The story progresses slowly, with many many many worthless scenes and shots of him walking and driving around a city, looking around at stuff. Slowly. Inexorably slowly. There's nothing to get out of this movie, at least, not considering the two hours it took to sit through. And what a painful two hours those were. And I absolutely hated hated hated the blatant and unapologetic homage/theft of the Rashomon concept.
There were actually a lot of things I liked about this movie. I loved how Jarmusch doubled words, events, and character relationships and motivations. I didn't understand its purpose, but found the usage very poetic. The music was exceptional, but every aspect surrounding the use of the music made it so awkward to hear. There was one scene at the end, where a little girl shoots an unloaded gun at a guy, and he stumbles as if actually shot. The ambiguity in that single scene is quite beautiful and would have ended the entire movie on the perfect note. Instead, the movie's actual ending sucked. There were a lot of nice scenes in general, but they don't make up for the slow pace and meaningless, hackneyed plot. Do not waste your time with this movie.IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0165798/