a review of

Really amazing shit from writer/director Atsushi Yamatoya who, among other things, co-wrote Seijun Suzuki’s surreal and hyper-stylized neo-noir gangster masterpiece Branded To Kill. This one has a similar visual aesthetic, but takes things even a few notches further in terms of dream logic, wild montage and an overall avantgarde approach to japanese gangster cinema. A kick-ass soundtrack delivers the final icing on the cake for this confusing fever dream of a movie. Although i’ve seen this as part of Rapid Eye Movies / Third Window Films’ pink film anthology, the erotica in this is dialed down enough that i’d say it barely qualifies as a true pink flick and it benefits the movie greatly, with the few sex scenes advancing the story organically instead of interrupting the plot for a (studio-mandated) softcore fuckfest every 15 minutes.