AllMovie

When his police detective best friend is killed, down-at-heel private eye and part-time blues singer BJ gets the blame. He must start his own investigation to clear his name, but what he uncovers is a tangled web involving crooked cops, drug-dealing gangsters, the city’s underground scenes, and his own past. A loose remake of Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye that also draws from Visconti’s Death in Venice, this was Matsuda’s break with his action hero image. Samurai movie veteran Eiichi Kudo relishes his chance at directing a neo-noir that captures urban Japan at the height of 1980s decadence.