Lean, mean and Japanese take on American-style pulp noir. The story is ultra-simple. A hired hit man guns down a Yakuza boss and then spends the rest of the film on the run, with vengeance-minded gangsters on his sac like a case of crabs. And that’s it, Daddy-O. That’s the whole story. Our hit man hides out in a coastal town, which the Yakuzas turn upside-down looking for him. He gets out of tight spots through varying combinations of clever thinking and deadly force. Director Takashi Nomura’s storytelling is very Anthony Mann or Joseph H. Lewis. It’s all clean lines and hard edges, men with guns and foreboding streets, in a short running time. Nomura’s moving camera is the modern touch. He doesn’t merely observe; he prowls. And when two characters interact, Nomura often forgoes conventional cutting in favor of violent whip pans back and forth. It’s a energetic film that delivers on the title’s boldness.