-over-the-top jazz soundtrack by ideologically problematic but very important avant-garde composer Toshirō Mayuzumi is so much fun (for my fellow jazz enthusiasts btw he collaborated w/none other than max roach + abbey lincoln on the ‘Black Sun’ soundtrack--look for it!)

-Tatsuya Nakadai always makes the most hilariously “off” and freaky facial expressions which is why he’s one of my fav. actors but crazy Nietzschean~ bisexual loner who doesn’t skip leg day and anecdotally dumps sewage on a statue of Jesus is some hypothetical yukio mishima wattpad content... so many touches of irony in nakadai's performance--10/10 truly

-tension between the blatant Communist Message Delivery and the complexity of a lumpen villain who cowardly uses others for his own self-preservation (without this ever becoming, thankfully, a vehicle for “social critique” or a plea for empathy—quite the opposite) while also simultaneously marvelling in his perverse nihilism at his ability to outsmart everyone “just because”—a certain lowkey overrated film made 4 years later featuring a clumsy swagless kidnapper who throws a tantrum bc he just needs some AC really could never... We’ve got some deep-end ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’-level f*ck-capitalism in this one!

side-note as a part-time philosophy teacher but his paper was so insanely incoherent that it made the movie even funnier and I honestly think this was intentional (!)