It's an obscure straight-to-video release with a cast and director who've not done much other screen work, apart from Laura Aoyama's porn career. (This was her only straight acting role.) Nonetheless, I like the script. It's doing a lot and working reasonably hard, with a sub-Tarantino Reservoir Dogs sort of tone. Gangsters, wannabe-gangsters and a girl all steal, double-cross and shoot each other. Thugs make enemies of even scarier thugs who are highly motivated to get their goods back. "We're rich!" say people who presumably weren't expecting a long life even before the zombies appeared.

There's dialogue to set up a scene that made me blanch. Kissing a zombie? And it's a deep kiss? Surely not a good idea, even if he's temporarily retained a few of his marbles. Other dialogue lays red herrings, leading us to assume that events will pan out in a particular way.

The script's problem is that it can look stupid. Sometimes this is because the characters are indeed being stupid (e.g. "dig it up with your hands"... why didn't you bring a spade?), but sometimes it only looks that way (burying the suitcase of money). There's a good reason for the latter. Until we learn that, though, it looks stupid, because it's: (a) throwing away lots of money that our anti-heroes had put their lives on the line to steal, and (b) discarding something that the money's previous owners will be coming hard to retrieve. At first glance, that plot beat smells of script contrivance. Our anti-heroes had no other reason to return to the mountains and meet zombies after dark.

Mind you, it's our anti-heroes are undeniably stupid. Normal people don't behave like that. That "MONEY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVERYTHING!!!" yakuza is particularly bone-headed, even though not recovering that money might well have got him tortured and/or executed by his boss. One man's mental level almost seems to improve on being zombified. (These zombies will retain some awareness and even speech for a short time after being turned.)

It's mildly sleazy. The only female character (Maki) has sex in her first scene, gets ogled by the camera in the shower and might have performed sexual favours on gangsters who'd been threatening to torture her. We don't know what happened between the broken glass and her zipping up her dress.

Even the zombies are quite good. They don't end up doing much and might thus disappoint hardcore zombie fans, but I liked the imagery. There are some classical zombie shots. Darkness, mist, hands on the window, etc. They're a threatening presence.

It's quite good, despite being a trashy straight-to-video film with indifferent (but macho) acting. Imagine a Japanese Elmore Leonard, with zombies. Everyone's dangerous. No exceptions. Often largely to themselves (i.e. survival instincts down the toilet), admittedly, but that can make you cringe too. Mind you, the nearest thing to a likeable character is a hitman who doesn't enjoy his job and just does it for the money. (Oh, and Maki's boyfriend Akio isn't that hitman, despite a mild resemblance. They're different actors.) Overall, this one's more impressive than you'd expect.

Not to be confused with Gangsters, Guns and Zombies (2012), although it sounds as if there are points of similarity. That film's British.