He holds a letter from his boss Mr. Yasuhara promising that he would receive control of the security business for the speedboat racetrack in exchange for killing Yamada.

Mantani is Kanai's sworn brother, so Kawada sees this as another means by which Osaka seeks to control Fukui.

Kiku's younger sister Nobuko and brother Takashi, a yakuza in the Yanaka Group in Kanazawa, take Kawada to their hometown of Wajima to recover.

Kawada forcefully convinces Chairman Ryugasaki in Nagoya to lend him some powerful machine guns.

When Kawada and his men arrive and rescue Nobuko, she grabs a knife and kills Takashi, then turns herself in to the police.

In his book Outlaw Masters of Japanese Film, author Chris Desjardins writes that the film is "another jitsuroku yakuza blitzkrieg, this time set in a snowy Hokkaido coastal town where a murderously independent yakuza boss (Hiroki Matsukata) is bent on gaining tighter control of the territory.

Sonny Chiba is slickly venal as an oily, smooth-talking gangster and Ko Nishimura convincing as always, as an elder boss obstinately sticking to his guns.

Filmed on actual Hokkaido locations, the stormy winter atmosphere is savage and palpably chilling, giving the cold-blooded brutality on display a teeth-chattering edge.

"[1] In his Book Spinegrinder: The Movies Most Critics Won't Wrote About, Clive Davies called the film "an absolutely first-class yakuza gangster war thriller that benefits from having the story located in the coastal town of Hokuriku.