"Uchida was long known as director of fine period dramas, but here he turned to a contemporary story with equal success. Based on a novel by Tsutomu Minakami (author of 'A House in the Quarter'), the film is an example of that particularly popular Japanese genre, the 'humanistic thriller.' A man murders a pawnbroker's entire family and is never caught. Ten years later, when he is a successful businessman, a prostitute to whom he had given some money immediately after the crime shows up to thank him. Afraid he has been found out, he kills her as well. The second killing eventually leads to solution of the first crime. The film focuses on the efforts of the senior detective (Junzaburo Ban) to understand the mind of the criminal (Rentaro Mikuni), whom we see not as a villain but as a complex mixture of good and evil." --Alan Paul, Japan Society