This is prime Jim Jarmusch, a moody and minimalist and formally elegant slice of estrangement and alienation, a gangster genre piece filtered through self-conscious French and Japanese reworkings of the American gangster movie and then brought back to America. Ghost Dog (a stirring Forest Whitaker) is the embodiment of the mythic lone hero, a melancholic, monosyllabic African-American hitman who resides on a rooftop among carrier pigeons and adheres to the Samurai 101 path of finding a master and then devoting your very being to obeying and defending that master. Ghost Dog grabs onto Louie (John Tormey), a below-the-line Mafia capo who once saved his life, and he spends much of the movie standing up for Louie, killing for Louie, whether Louie wants him to or not. Jarmusch allows you to decide whether Ghost Dog's trip toward his own annihilation is pure nobility or sheer stupidity. Robby Muller's cinematography makes it all cool and alive, as does the sublime RZA musical soundtrack.