Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
A detective breaks all rules of ethical conduct while investigating a colleague’s involvement in drug pushing and yakuza activities.
Takeshi Kitano's directorial debut is a genuinely distinctive crime film that subverts genre expectations with deadpan pacing, sudden outbursts of violence, and an anti-hero detective who operates on his own brutal moral code. Beat Takeshi's performance anchors the film with quiet menace and unpredictability that feels wholly original. The story itself is fairly standard yakuza procedural territory but the execution is singular — Kitano's unhurried rhythm and refusal of conventional action-movie catharsis mark this as the emergence of a unique cinematic voice. The ending is bleak but perhaps slightly undercooked compared to his later work.