Pistol Opera

After a 10-year hiatus from filmmaking, 78-year-old Japanese maverick Seijun Suzuki reworked his cockeyed, pop-art masterpiece BRANDED TO KILL (1967) into something altogether more delirious and less comprehensible. The essential set-up — a savage power struggle is decimating the ranks of a Japanese murder-for-hire guild — remains the same, but center stage now belongs to a particularly lethal woman, Miyuki Minazuki (the striking Makiko Esumi), aka "Stray Cat," the World Assassination Guild's No. 3 killer. Dedicated assassin Miyuki, who'd rather make love to her gun than a man, has formed an intense erotic bond with her agent, Sayoko Uekyo (Sayoko Yamaguchi...