Boiling point = 3-4x jagutsu

Masahiko (Masahiko Ono) is a young gas station attendant whose life revolves around work and baseball. Though usually lazy and inert, Masahiko creates havoc when he punches a rude customer who turns out to be a highly violent gangster. With the gangsters seeking revenge, Masahiko sets out with his best friend to buy a gun in Okinawa. There they meet up with a violent thug (Takeshi Kitano) who takes them on an increasingly absurd road trip in which moral, sexual and criminal codes all become increasingly mixed up. “Beat” Takeshi’s second feature continues his highly idiosyncratic exploration of the gangster film in which operatic moments of violence are contrasted by elegant and largely wordless scenes of contemplation and respite. Kitano’s movies are uniquely personal examinations of masculinity. His own performance in “Boiling Point” as the bisexual misogynist gangster is by turns highly comical and highly confronting. In this ambivalent movie the rituals and cliches of the gangster and yakuza film are both celebrated and the rigorously undermined. The aimless young characters who come into contact with the underworld of crime soon realise that beneath the posturing and display of excess and wealth, there is finally only the shattering certainty of death. It is sometimes said that film noir owes a great debt to existentialism: it may be that Kitano is one of its greatest philosophers.