American soldiers with carbines move down the fallen base filled up with bodies of Japanese combatants.

This opening scene is followed by the gun battle of a yakuza film where one of the protagonists, 'Beat' Takeshi, plays the principal role.

(The caterpillar in a bouquet, a female impersonator of taishū engeki (Taichi Saotome), tap dancers in a rehearsal set, Akihiro Miwa (a transvestite chanson singer), a pair of fat twins, and dialogs at a ramen restaurant repeated later in varied situations.)

Mr. Kitano, the other protagonist, appears in a clown costume among the guys in a wardrobe of TV station.

The film implies it is some kind of a dream, showing deceased guys appear again in blood and yell alive normally.

Accomplishing his fantasies of acting like a movie star 'Beat' Takeshi, Kitano takes a journey into the absolutely bizarre, surreal world (an underground nightclub, night gun battles, and the catastrophe at a Boiling Point-, or Sonatine-like tropical island).

"Kitano's trilogy of parts aside, there's a bevy of other doppelgangers, mirror images and dead-ringers rife throughout this movie," reported the Daily Yomiuri in its review in 2005.

"Kotomi Kyono, while a tad dull as the movie star Takeshi's girlfriend, bears more than just costume jewellery sparkle in her ulterior role as a glitzy, ditsy yakuza girlfriend who happens to be the deadbeat Takeshi's tormenting neighbor.