Note: John Wilmot was busy attending the Cannes Film Festival, so this month's column will cover five DVD classics. Regular reviews return next month.

New Japanese film reviews appear every last Friday of the month.

Hebi no Michi (DVD, 1998) ****

Another deadpan, no-nonsense gangster thriller that moves with relentless tension directed by acclaimed horror-meister Kiyoshi Kurosawa ("Cure," "Kairo," "Charisma"). After his 8-year-old daughter is kidnapped and murdered, tough yakuza Teruyaki Kagawa teams up with mysterious, mild-mannered math teacher Sho Aikawa to find the culprits. They capture two members of the yakuza's former crew and casually torture them in a derelict factory (one of the director's favorite locations) until both accuse each other, then a third person. As the two avengers go through their list of possible culprits, and as their hands become covered in blood, Aikawa reveals himself to be driven by a secret agenda more sinister than vengeance itself. A terrific low-key performance by Aikawa makes this a thoroughly gripping, gruesome drama.

Kyohansha (video, 1999) ****

Directed by Kazuhiro Kiuchi, this is a belated follow up to the V-cinema success "Carlos," about a Brazilian hitman in Tokyo. In an unlikely but effective piece of casting, comic actor Naoto Takenaka plays the assassin from Sao Paolo who returns to Japan and takes possession of some bloody gangster loot. The yakuza call in a pair of bleach-blonde killer brothers (one of whom is played by the hilariously foul-mouthed rock star Yuya Uchida ) to get their money back, but Carlos takes the battle to them assisted only by a gutsy young victim of spouse abuse (ex-pop star Kyoko Koizumi, the accomplice of the title) and a pair of punks. A cool, tense, no-nonsense gangster action movie that owes more to Hong Kong gangster gunplay flicks, this is a world away from the usual scowl-and-growl fests of V-cinema yakuza series.

Onibi (DVD, 1997) ****

Along with Miike and Kurosawa, the other important director working in the gangster genre is Rokuro Mochizuki. His trilogy of melancholy yakuza elegies "Another Lonely Hitman," "Chinpira" and "Onibi" reveal the underbelly of the gangster world. In "Onibi," 1970s action star Yoshio Harada plays the assassin of the title, a stoic killer just out of jail and looking to stay out of trouble. He takes a job as a driver for the mob, but soon falls in love with glamorous lounge pianist and drug-addict Reiko Kataoka. Harada's dreams of the straight life evaporate when the Kataoka asks him to take out a violent ex-boyfriend, a hit that brings him up against his current employees. A beautifully nuanced portrait of the thug life, shorn of any residual glamour and chic. Based on a story written by Yukio Yamanouchi, a former lawyer to the Yamaguchi syndicate.

Koroshi (DVD, 2000) ****

Cannes-favorite Masahiro Kobayashi's best film is this very French noir tale of hitmen in the frozen north. Ryo Ishibashi stars as a redundant salaryman in the bleak wastes of Hokkaido in the winter. Unable to tell his beautiful young wife Nene Otsuka that he has lost his job, he spends his days in the car-park of a local pachinko parlor. Then, a mysterious stranger - played with plenty of enigma by Ken Ogata - offers him a deal: kill a man for 5 million yen. The first hit is surprisingly easy, and soon Ishibashi is bugging the stranger for more work. This is a blackly comic film of everyday murder and betrayal, shot in distancing long shots in the frozen flatlands, with excellent performances by Ishibashi as the hapless hitman and Nene Otsuka as his languorous, sexy wife.

Outlaw Rekka (DVD, 2002) ****

After deconstructing the yakuza genre with the cartoonish "Dead or Alive" series, Takashi Miike returned to it in 2002 with this high-octane actioner starring sneering stalwart Riki Takeuchi. It begins with a ludicrous hit, which forces Takeuchi and his henchman Kenichi Endo to lay low on the road for a while with a couple of Korean rock chicks. In a tit-for-tat killing, Takeuchi takes out degenerate gang boss Renji Ishibashi (another Miike stalwart who does "old pervert" with poker-faced glee). The Kabukicho factions manouver for position, thugs and cronies are tortured and wacked, and finally Takeuchi gets really mad and sets off for Daijiro Harada's office armed with a Chinese Army bazooka! Allegedly based on the memoirs of infamous Yakuza turned film star Noburo Ando, this is wild yakuza action with guns, tire irons, swords and bazookas.