is a 1989 Japanese neo-noir action thriller film directed, co-written by and starring Takeshi Kitano. It was Kitano's directorial debut, and marked the beginning of his career as a filmmaker. Plot Kitano plays Azuma, a police detective who lives with his intellectually disabled sister Akari (who he is extremely overprotective of), has a gambling problem that forces him to constantly borrow money, and has a reputation for using excessive violence when dealing with criminals, ignoring police rules and regulations when they become inconvenient, and for his strong sense of morality, which is shown when, after witnessing a gang of teenage boys beat up a homeless man for fun, he enters the home of the gang's leader and beats him before making him promise to turn himself and his friends in, which he does the next day. Azuma's superiors, who admire him for his ability to get results, overlook his constant violations of the police code by making him write "apologies" whenever he does something unlawful. Azuma and his new partner, Kikuchi, are assigned to a case involving a murdered dope pusher, and break up an attempted drug deal in the bathroom of a nightclub. The seller, who works for yakuza boss Nito, names Azuma's close friend Iwaki, a cop on the vice squad, as his supplier. Azuma is subsequently asked to help find Iwaki, who has seemingly gone into hiding due to newspapers uncovering his ties to the yakuza. A fisherman then finds Iwaki's corpse hanging from a noose under a bridge. Refusing to believe that his friend committed suicide, Azuma attempts to track down the dealers from before, but both men are executed by Kiyohiro, a sociopathic yakuza hitman. Unable to take action against the well-connected Nito, Azuma resorts to planting drugs in Kiyohiro's apartment, then taking him back to the station and having Kikuchi stand guard while he tortures the gangster and threatens him with a gun. This goes too far for the deputy chief, who forces Azuma to resign from the police to protect the force from investigation. Azuma spends his first day of unemployment visiting an art gallery, hitting baseballs at a batting cage, and people-watching at the park, while Kiyohiro and his men pick up Akari at a shop and bring her to their hideout, where they take turns raping her and getting her hooked on drugs. Kiyohiro also defies Nito's orders and tries to