Japanese cult director Kinji Fukasaku’ (“Battle Royale”) real-life biopic of one of modern Japan’s most notorious yakuzas, Rikio Ishikawa (Tetsuya Watari), is a brutal tale of the sociopath’s quick rise and decline. Co-writers Fukasaku, Tatsuhiko Kamoi, Fumio Konami, and Hirô Matsuda base it on the novel by Goro Fujita. Told in a documentary style it has Riki born in 1924 in rural Mito (as was Fukasaku) and leaving at 16 to become a yakuza in the Kawada family of Tokyo. His gang worked the Shinjuku territory, where they controlled the black market trade. His aggressive attitude made him rise quickly, but his downfall started in the postwar period of 1946 when he got into a foolish dispute with the boss (Hajime Hana) over a gang war he started that cost his gang a fortune. In a sword fight, he seriously injured his boss. It led to him sentenced to a prison term of 18 months and becoming ex-communicated from his yakuza family for 10 years for violating the yakuza code. Upon his prison release, he moved to Osaka and got involved in drugs while living in a flophouse and screwing around with hookers. Unable to resist the lure of the black market in Tokyo, he returns after 18 months (a definite no-no) and gets into a turf argument with his Kawada brother Imai (Tatsuo Umemiya) and slays him and harms his wife. Riki after he’s jumped in 1951 by his gang but survives a brutal attack, turns himself over to the police and is sentenced to 10 years. Before he jumped from the roof of the Fuchu prison in 1956, he wrote on the wall of his cell: “What a laugh! 30 years of madness.”