It's based on a manga yakuza series (Minami no Teiou), that's been running since 1992 and had 182 volumes last time I looked. It's had two anime OVAs and so many live-action adaptations that imdb has given up keeping track of them. This film is #31 in the series.

The protagonist is a loan shark played by Riki Takeuchi and you'll know on sight that he's bad news. The sunglasses, the flashy suits, the enunciation so macho that you can hardly understand what he's saying... plus, of course, Takeuchi's really good at playing yakuza.

This film involves a washed-up yakuza called Fukunaga who borrows money and, er... look, I didn't care. They're yakuza. They're dull and they're scumbags. This series clearly has a fanbase, but it's like watching rats or cockroaches trying to steal from each other. We know it'll end up as yakuza vs. yakuza. One unfortunate chap tries to steal a car from yakuza, which his victims don't take graciously. (He gets a dip in the sea.)

I liked that old bloke and his daughter at the bar. She normally boots out yakuza, but she knows that if her father quit crime, he'd just be a failure with no talent or future. She doesn't hate him. That scene was okay.

The film as a whole, though, I just didn't find interesting. Personally, for me. Others might disagree. There's a Chinese gangster from Taiwan with a pachinko cheat card. There's a dodgy property developer. There are jovial, thuggish people who'd fit well into The Sopranos if they weren't Japanese. There's a surprisingly lack of anything genuinely nasty happening to anyone. Also, Takeuchi sneers so hard that you'd think the wind changed years ago and his face stuck like that.

Naaah. This isn't my thing, but feel free to ignore me and check it out anyway. Any movie series that reaches episode 31 must be doing something right, while the manga's sold 53 million copies to date.