"Although it was conceived as another yakuza movie, set in the thirties, Suzuki stated that he was seduced by the beauty of Masako Izumi and responded by making the tough gangster story into his 'most feminine' film: turning violent action into romantic and sentimental scenes. The plot concerns a yakuza who has to perform one more killing before he is allowed by his boss to go straight. He obeys, with dire consequences." (Shinko Suga, Edinburgh) "Suzuki lavishes extraordinary attention on lighting, texture, decor and staging, turning an otherwise ordinary genre movie into a spectacle to set the eyes on fire." (Tony Rayns) He set something on fire: this film elicited the first warning from Nikkatsu studio executives who, after Branded to Kill, and at the height of Suzuki's popularity, showed him the door. It seems he was making "incomprehensible" films.