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The gangster trio Kanzaki (Kenichi Hagiwara), Shiba (Sonny Chiba) and
Imura (Renji Ishibashi) has pulled off quite some amazing heists of late,
but for their latest heist, they team up with Kadomachi (Kazuya Kimura),
an acquaintance of Shiba's young wife Mai (Keiko Oginome), and this is
where things start going wrong: Basically, Kadomachi is a hot-headed
streetpunk with no manners who is in it just for the money (which he needs
to open a rock club) and who shows no respect for anyone. The heist
itself goes unexpectedly well though, but then the four find out that
instead of the expected 200 million Yen they have only grabbed 50 million
- and now Kadomachi, frustrated about this outcome, shoots Imura dead,
seriously injures Shiba, blows up the gang's headquarters and takes off
with all the loot. He meets up with Mai, his accopmlice in the whole
affair, and is soon tricked out of the loot by her himself. But Mai feels
drawn to Kadomachi, who other than Shiba is pretty much her age, and about
as crazy as her, and after she has already gotten rid of him, she teams up
with him again. It's not long before they have sex, too ... In the
meantime, Shiba dies from his injuries, and now Kanzaki swears to get the
money back, also as a way to avenge his dead friends. Soon he gets into
shootout after shootout, carchase after carchase with Kadomachi and Mai,
but never close enough to them to get his hands on the loot. Eventually,
he figures out the only way to corner Kadomachi and Mai is at Kadomachi's
rock club. In the meantime, someone else has gotten wind of Kadomachi's
newfound wealth, loan shark Yoshida, whom Kadomachi owns quite a heap of
money, but Yoshida now figures out a way to get his hands on the money and
Kadomachi's club at the same time. Of course, the police have eventually
figured out what's going on as well, so it all culminates in an extended
four-way chase/shootout police vs Yoshida and gang vs Kadomachi and Mai vs
Kanzaki, during which Mai and Kadomachi actually fall in love, but at the
end of which they both are shot while Yoshida and men are arrested. Only
Kanzaki, who somehow has gotten his hands on the loot, gets away in a
daring escape over the roofs of several police cars in his range rover -
that nevertheless lands him in the water and has him lose all the money
... The ending has a severely injured Kanzaki and his wife (Yumi
Takigawa) relocating to another city - where he even in his present
miserable state can't withstand the lure of a bank to rob ...
Maybe
not the most intelligent film, but a piece of high-octane action cinema
that is exhilarating first and foremost because it does not try in the
least to be funny, but features quite so many over-the-top action
setpieces coupled with countless unexpected plottwists one can't help but
laugh - but laugh with the film, not at it. Add to this a self-assured
directorial effort by Kinji Fukasaku, who knows how to handle chaotic
action scenes like no other and is an expert when it comes to sudden
shifts in mood and atmosphere, and you have an amazingly enjoyable (and
for one reason rather underappreciated) piece of action cinema.
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