Under the not-unreasonable charge that his films made no sense and no money, Japanese cult director Seijun Suzuki was fired from B-movie house Nikkatsu Studios after making 1967's Branded To Kill, ironically stalling his career with what many consider to be his masterwork. So what if its nonsensical story of dueling assassins, relayed in a fractured and willfully abstract cinematic grammar reminiscent of Jean-Luc Godard, could freeze the brain upon a moment's reflection? What continues to make the film so mesmerizing is the vibrant, second-by-second sense that the next scene will come alive with invention, eroticism, and artful compositions. More than three decades later, the 78-year-old director has resurfaced with the ersatz sequel Pistol Opera, which is like a lot of other sequels in that it repeats the same formula to diminishing returns. In many respects, the film merely retools the original: The luminous black-and-white Cinemascope of Branded To Kill has changed to the splashy Technicolor of Suzuki's 1966 Tokyo Drifter, his #3-ranked assassin hero has switched genders, and the elusive #1-ranked killer is again an omnipresent specter under a new name. At the very least, the shiny new model bears Suzuki's unmistakable stamp, showing off his renewed willingness to push ludicrous genre sport to the level of avant-garde performance art. But only hardcore auteurists will feel inclined to forgive the old master his lapses, not so much in the incomprehensible storytelling (which is to be expected), but in an artistry that's distinctly lacking in energy and invention. Giving new dimension to the adage "if looks could kill," lithe beauty Makiko Esumi–a former model best known abroad for starring in Hirokazu Kore-eda's Maborosi–dons sleek kimonos and high-heeled boots as "Stray Cat," a rising star in the Assassins Guild. For reasons that are never entirely clear, the guild collapses into an all-out, kill-or-be-killed battle royal for the #1 ranking, which is currently occupied by "Hundred Eyes," a rogue mystery killer whom only Esumi's boss (Sayoko Yamaguchi) can verify exists. Suzuki pits his plucky heroine against a battery of quirky young comers, including one hapless rival who darts after marks in a souped-up wheelchair, but the battles are arbitrary and repetitive, an excuse to fiddle around with the wild costumes and production design. Nevertheless, Suzuki's play with color and shadow yields some intermittently gorgeous sequences, such as a dreamy netherworld with reflecting pools of amber and a final showdown imagined with bold and striking theatricality. If Pistol Opera turns out to be Suzuki's swan song, instead of just an anticlimactic comeback, no one can claim he didn't go out on his own stubborn terms.