NEW BATTLES WITHOUT HONOR AND HUMANITY 2: THE BOSS’S HEAD

In the early 1970s, Kinji Fukasaku's five-film BATTLES WITHOUT HONOR AND HUMANITY series was a massive hit in Japan, and kicked off a boom in realistic modern yakuza films based on true stories. Although Fukasaku had intended to end the series, Toei Studio convinced him to return to the director's chair for this unconnected follow-up trilogy, each starring BATTLES leading man Bunta Sugawara and telling separate, but fictional stories about the yakuza elsewhere in Japan.

Each one is also a top-notch crime action thriller: hard-boiled, entertaining, and distinguished by Fukasaku's directorial genius, funky musical scores by composer Toshiaki Tsushima, and the onscreen power of Toei's greatest yakuza movie stars.

In THE BOSS’S HEAD, Bunta Sugawara is Kuroda, an itinerant gambler who steps in when a hit by drug-addicted assassin Kusunoki (TAMPOPO's Tsutomu Yamazaki) goes wrong, and takes the fall on behalf of the Owada family, but when the gang fails to make good on financial promises to him, Kuroda targets the family bosses with a ruthless vengeance.