About as bleak and dire an examination of violence I’ve ever seen. What starts as a playful and subversive crime caper tailspins into something uniquely sadistic and upsetting when empty evil meets gleeful evil. Jesus.

Looks unbelievable. Hiding (an astonishing) Yūsaku Matsuda in the margins of many frames, a dispassionate observer to banality, plays out like a slot machine when his motivation is revealed. And even then, Murakawa doesn’t seem to have an answer to why we’re witnessing this. A film that feels as taken aback and confused by its own depths of rage as we are. Deeply haunting stuff, kinda blown away. Lotta kinship to Kiyoshi Kurosawa here.