Tattooed Life

Tetsuo (Hideki Takahashi), a low-level yakuza is double-crossed by his boss and attacked. His younger brother Kenji (Kotobuki Hananomoto), an aspiring artist with no connections to crime, comes to his aid and kills Tetsuo's assailant. Fearing repercussions from the yakuza they flee to Manchuria where they risk coming under suspicion of rival gangs. Seijun Suzuki remains loyal to the conventions of the yakuza film, but Tattooed Life contains flashes of his later creative genius, including a final act of explosive visual excess that has become one of the director’s all-time classic scenes. (Radiance Films)