Probably Shinoda’s most accessible film for uninitiated viewers, this enthralling thriller concerns a yakuza (Ikebe Ryo) who, on his release from prison after serving time for murder, returns to his old gang and is drawn into another dangerous assignment. Admirers of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai will find themselves at home with Shinoda’s radicalization of film noir through style and behavior. Veteran matinee idol Ikebe delivers a career-redefining performance; he is ideally matched with Kaga Mariko as a young woman seeking excitement in gambling, drugs and fast driving. Violent set pieces are an inevitability, but Shinoda approaches them with reluctance and misdirection, subverting them into blankly murky anticlimaxes.