Battles Without Honor and Humanity [Blu-ray/DVD] [Blu-ray]

Kinji Fukasaku directed this powerful and uncompromising look at the deadly stakes of life among the Yakuza -- the Japanese Mafia. Shozo Hirono (Bunta Sugawara) is a former Japanese soldier who, following his nation's defeat in World War II, finds himself in a prison cell in Hiroshima on a murder charge. While behind bars, Hirono gains a loyal friend in fellow criminal Wagasugi (Tatsuo Umemiya), and upon his release Hirono joins Wagasugi in an underworld gang. What starts as a seemingly easy way to earn some quick money becomes something darker and bloodier as Wagasugi and his comrades fall into a violent street war against another mob faction that grows into a long-standing feud. Jingi Naki Tatakai (aka The Yakuza Papers: Battles Without Honor and Humanity) was the first in a series of five successful crime films from Fukasaku.