Jô Shishido is fresh out of prison and is picked to lead a crew in an armored car robbery. He needs the money for an operation for his sister, so he agrees to take on a tough crew. However, things don't go right, and there is betrayal and a chance for vengeance awaiting him.
Although the heist is well performed, I found the sheer violence, from beginning to end to be almost a parody of the form. Shishido starts by beating up his potential crewmates in order to establish... that this is one of the Nikkatsu crime thrillers, I suppose, and those are about tough guys committing crimes with plenty of bloodshed. That it does, but it offers little to the genre but Shishido in his typecast screen role, doing more of the same.... an excess rather than an advance and foreshadowing the logical end point of the dramatic form.
Although the heist is well performed, I found the sheer violence, from beginning to end to be almost a parody of the form. Shishido starts by beating up his potential crewmates in order to establish... that this is one of the Nikkatsu crime thrillers, I suppose, and those are about tough guys committing crimes with plenty of bloodshed. That it does, but it offers little to the genre but Shishido in his typecast screen role, doing more of the same.... an excess rather than an advance and foreshadowing the logical end point of the dramatic form.