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Onibi: The Fire Within. Japan 1997. Directed by Rokuro Mochizuki

A former yakuza hitman Kuni gets released out of jail, and tries to start a new life. He eventually meets a beautiful piano player Asako and between them grows a romantic affair. She asks the help from Kuni, in eliminating her sisters' extremely chauvinist husband. At the same time, old and new relationships to yakuza gangs are becoming a burden to Kuni.

Onibi : The Fire Within seems at first as a familiar story of a criminal unsuccessfully trying to left his old world behind, when outsiders and former gang fellows won't give him a chance to do it. Fortunately, Rokuro Mochizuki has constructed a properly feel-good drama with effective doses of off-beat humor, suspense, action and couple of striking violent shocks. Although the overall content might be rather light - maybe shallow, even - the highly likable characters are the power that drive Onibi : The Fire Within from the start to very end in enjoyably fluent way.

As said before, the actors and actresses behind the characters give at least 50 percent of appeal to this movie. Yoshio Harada as Kuni is a perfect choice to the role of warm-hearted, but necessary explosive former criminal. Sho Aikawa (a regular face in Takashi Miike's films) may repeat his role as cool, stylishly clothed and sun-glassed yakuza worker, but he does that so well that there is no space for whining about it. It must be remembered that these fine performances can be said undoubtedly also the achievements of capable director.

Onibi : The Fire Within has some similarities to Takashi Miike's films but it is anything but a Miike rip-off. Rokuro Mochizuki indeed has his own strengths as director and one of them is not to add irrelevant themes and scenes to beautifully simple story.

The DVD release by Artsmagic has 5.1 Dolby Digital audio channel, which uses also rear channels when it's necessary - and for a drama, quite often. Anamorphic picture looks very good. Extra material includes Tom Mes' audio commentary, as well as bio & filmographies and an interview with Rokuro Mochikuzi - which was again interesting depth-in-look to the backgrounds of the film.