Made back-to-back with Serpent's Path, in only two weeks, this yakuza piece either begins or ends Kurosawa's remarkable two-film treatise on revenge and the human spirit. We open with Niijima (the supernaturally becalmed Sho Aikawa) carrying his murdered daughter's body; minutes later, he is emotionessly burying that of her killer. Vengeance rarely dissolves grief, however; his house and his wife remain haunted by the child, but a chance meeting with an old classmate-now a gangster-promises a new life. First literally rubber-stamping documents in an empty office, the stone-faced Niijima soon graduates to gangland slaughters, with his new surrogate yakuza family relaxing between rub outs with some frisbee, roller-skating, picnics in the park, and even paleontology digs. Kurosawa continually cuts away from the action, avoiding shoot-outs and gunplay for deadpan moments of humor and silence, shifting his focus away from genre games towards an examination of the human sorrow that in the end eerily returns, still waiting to be buried.-Jason Sanders, PFA