a review of

One of the things I love about this movie is how the tone shifts and at the end you're watching something that feels much different than it did at the beginning. It starts out quite funny — Mr Suzuki never gets to eat his adorable-looking lunch, this music my partner refers to as "Legally-Distinct Benny Hill Music" that plays whenever the Yakuza are around... But then the tone shifts as the extortion escalates further and further, becoming desperate for the hotel staff, the existence of the hotel itself, and the physical safety of everyone involved. You meet her briefly at the beginning, but Nobuko Miyamoto's entrance where she finds the hotel staff assigned to deal with the Yakuza — who are exhausted, terrified, and hiding under a banquet table — and crawls under it to introduce herself, is iconic.