Shuij, an independent filmmaker with nothing but failures and debts to show for it, who now lives out his cinephilia in his own cinema club as a program compiler-guide-canonist with a certain authoritarian verve, is informed of the violent death of his brother. He had borrowed money from the yakuza to finance Shuji's last film; when he was unable to repay the debt on time, the loan sharks drew a final line under the bill. Now the yakuza are at his door - he has to take care of his debts himself. And he does so in a way that is, to put it mildly, insane: He gets himself beaten up for a fee in the men's room of a bar frequented mainly by demimonde - each blow costs a certain amount, with the price rising over time as this perverse pastime becomes more popular in certain circles. But how long can you stand it?
Existentialist genre baroque, plump and audacious, which knows how to keep up the pressure for over two hours - and just when you think you've reached the ultimate level of excess, it goes for it again, and again, and again. A monstrosity of a movie in the best, grandest sense of the word.
