Private eyeTajima (Jo Shishido), who runs Detective Bureau 23 with two eccentricassistants, persuades the police to let him infiltrate a yakuza gang inorder to investigate illegal arms sales to the gangs by American GIs. Hefollows a trail that leads from girls in sleazy nightclubs to men inhigh places before his cover is blown and a hit is out on him. Thisexpert gangster movie-shot, as critics have noted, with a kinetic energyto make Sam Fuller weep-is also a set-up for Suzuki, the very type offilm he will soon begin to parody mercilessly. Already, this is astylishly idiosyncratic work, from "the gleefully hyperbolic setpieces of warfare between rival yakuza gangs (to) the wonderfullyabsurdist scene in which Tajima joins sometime girlfriend Sally in acabaret number....Compare Detective Bureau 23 with its immediatesuccessor, Youth of the Beast....Here, Suzuki stays just inside theline; there, he crosses it, never to return." (TonyRayns)