Onibi: The Fire Within

Kunihiro, a former hitman who has spent more than half his life in prison, is determined to go straight. But the incompetence of the new gangs soon has him calling on his old skills again. When he falls for Asako, who plays the piano, a fire is lit in him without his knowing, and it burns everything and everyone around him. The film holds its gangster elements tight and measured, making room for a subdued love story. The account does not make the violence showy; it gives it as the consequence of the man’s own decisions. Among Japanese crime films of 1997 it stands apart for its quiet tone. Yoshio Harada and Reiko Kataoka appear in Rokuro Mochizuki’s hundred and one minute Japanese film, completed in 1997.