Triggered by the discovery of two corpses-a dead cop, andhis equally dead mistress-a new yakuza in town (Jo Shishido) begins hisrise to power, using the Takeshita School of Knitting as a cover. Thiswas Suzuki's breakthrough film, as aggressively stylistic as they come,from the pink limo parked under matching pink cherry blossoms, to theincongruous sandstorm whipping around a sadist's room. "Suzuki'sirreverent attitude towards the yakuza is already fully in evidence.However much they may pay lip service to the code of honor, hisgangsters become comic (no matter how violent) as the conventions of thegenre are pushed to the point where they reveal their hollowartificiality. Sarcastically but with a straight face, he shows that ayakuza in films is only a romanticized version of an already idealizedimage of the samurai, (with) the aristocrat who employed the samurai tosteal and kill on his behalf (now) replaced by an urban gang boss ofuncertain social status in spite of his aristocraticpretensions."-Edinburgh Film Festival '88