Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

bleub0y Handsome Mr. Bandai, disco owner deep in debt to the mob, conceives a bold plan to rip off the very people to whom he owes money. Can he really think they'll not notice when he attempts to pay them off with their own jack, especially as he's present, unmasked, at the ripoff?His boyfriend, Mitsuya, goes from trying to kill him to taking a shower for him with no stop inbetween.Two more of his confederates are so obviously unstable it's a miracle anyone would trust them with an errand to buy a quart of milk let alone with a 100 million yen heist at the risk of everyone's lives.The only one with any sense in the whole undertaking is the ex-cop, Hizu, unless you count having a thing to do with any of the rest of them as indicating an obvious lack of sanity.You know up front they're all going to get blown away in the end. When finally it happens the only thing you wonder is why it took so long.

Dan Starkey An incoherent mess of violent visions, not helped by the execrable quality of the "Ocean Shores" DVD and its dubious subtitles. The popularity of Beat Takeshi must derive from something other than this film, in which he wears an expressionless face and shoots people. If you want to have a better opinion of director Takashi Ishii, watch the far superior girls-with-guns flick Black Angel.

Infofreak The first Takashi Ishii movie I watched was his excellent rape/revenge thriller 'Freezer', but his reputation as an exciting director with a lot of potential mainly rests on his yakuza movies, of which 'Gonin' is perhaps the best known. This is a really impressive movie, very dark, strange and violent. The bare bones of the plot - a group of guys decide to rob some gangsters, the gangsters vow revenge - is one that we have seen many, many times before in American movies, but Ishii manages to put a fresh spin on it, with unusual characters, and consistently original direction. I was fascinated from beginning to end. The ensemble cast are all excellent, but the most memorable performances are by Naoto Takenaka (who later appeared in 'Freezer', and Tsukamoto's astonishing 'Tokyo Fist'), who plays the unhinged salaryman Ogiwara, and cult figure Beat Takeshi, who plays Kyoya, the ruthless eyepatched hitman. Takeshi steals every scene he is in, and plays one of the nastiest characters of his career, only really topped by the psycho he played in his own 'Boiling Point'. 'Gonin' is highly recommended to anyone who enjoys doomed caper films, a genre that has its fair share of classics from 'Bob Le Flambeur' and 'The Killing' to 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'The Usual Suspects'. Add 'Gonin' to the list of those crime classics. Yes, it's that good!

Bruceva I watched Gonin about 3 times by now and still I have to say that it is a great movie even if evaluated under different perspectives. Each character is a profound mixture of different shapes. Out of a certain kind of despair every person in the movie develops its unique behaviour which is a result of their lifes they were living. Gonin includes many interesting themes such as homosexuality, childhood, fear and last but not least what life can make out of every person when it crushes upon you. Lately it appeared to me as if the modern hero has to be an introvert ruthless killer without emotion and basically I have to say that those tendencies are found in Gonin as well - Although it is rather an antihero who is presented in Gonin by the actor Takeshi Kitano in the role of the killer taken into service by the Yakuza-boss. The most remarkable scene as far as I'm concerned is the one where the story of the weird man, having lost his job, comes back home after they had stolen the money from the Yakuza. Gonin is a movie with great suspense and, if watched carefully, with profound and emotional content.