Sensitively directed by Yoichi Higashi (who wrote the screenplay based on a novel by Reiko Saibara), it tells the tale of Yasuyuki Tsukahara (Tadanobu Asano, looking nothing like Kakihara, the character he played in Takashi Miike’s Ichi the Killer), a man in his late thirties, perhaps early forties, who is drinking himself into an early grave.