Another Lonely Hitman

This moody Osaka blues gives a new tonality and impact to the generic tale of a hitman coming out of jail and finding everything changed. Ex-rocker Ishibashi plays Tachibana, who carries out a shattering, heroin-charged hit in the opening moments and serves a 10-year term for it. Discharged, he's disgusted to find the yakuza world he knows overrun by junk and so begins a doomed mission to clean it (and a new girlfriend) up. Mochizuki shoots the film as slow-burn drama interspersed with moments of intense violence; the images are as cool as the performances. The screenplay's from a novel by Yukio Yamanouchi, former lawyer to Japan's biggest yakuza gang, who does a cameo as a slimy bank manager welshing on a golf course deal.