This one is quite calm for a movie about battle for the Yakuza throne. Several families are at war, leaders are trying to cripple or set up or kill each other... and none of them are interesting as a characters. They're all just monotone criminal bastards, just two-dimensional YAKUZAs and we dont get to like any of them. So i can not understand why Kitano's gangster is main character, he is absolutely no different from the others.

But it was fun to watch a series of scenes of torture and crippling, which are pretty inventive.