Following the discovery of two corpses-a dead cop and his equally dead mistress-a new yakuza in town (Jo Shishido) begins his rise to power, using the Takeshita School of Knitting as a cover. This was Suzuki's breakthrough film, as aggressively stylistic as they come, from the pink limo parked under matching pink cherry blossoms, to the incongruous sandstorm. Even Jo Shishido's chipmunk cheeks are an element of style (what is he hiding in there?). "However much they may pay lip service to the code of honor, Suzuki's gangsters become comic (no matter how violent) as the conventions of the genre are pushed to the point where they reveal their hollow artificiality. Sarcastically but with a straight face, he shows that a yakuza in films is only a romanticized version of an already idealized image of the samurai...." (Edinburgh Film Festival '88)