This film is almost completely incomprehensible on first viewing. I rented it late one night, then cut it off about a half-hour in because I was sure I was too tired to understand what was going on. I watched it in its entirety the next day, and it still didn't make sense. That is in no way meant as a complaint. I read that, when director Seijun Suzuki turned this film in to his production company, they promptly fired him because it was a nonsensical morass. Sure, but what a lot of fun to watch.

Star Jo Shishido (who looks like a hamster with food in his cheek pouches after having collagen injected to enhance his cheekbones) plays Number 3 Killer Hanada, a man who has enough personal quirks to occupy a whole year on a therapist's couch. He is rendered immobile by the scent of boiling rice; there are a few hilarious scenes where he shouts at his wife or lover "Boil some rice!" as a prelude for sex. We first meet him when he is hired to escort a mysterious man from an airport. Gunfights and bizzare twists ensue until I think he delivers his charge safely. I can't tell for sure. He undertakes some more hit jobs, including one tour-de-force in which he uses a hot-air balloon to sail up the side of a building to get him outside the correct window, and another in which he shoots someone by unscrewing a sink pipe from the basement and shooting the guy when he leans over to wash an eyeball he has just gouged out (don't ask; this scene was cribbed by Jim Jarmusch in his atmospheric hit man flick Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai).

He is then approached by a completely over-the-top witch woman played by Mariko Ogawa, who is into spiders and butterflies and has a dead bird hanging from her rearview mirror. She hires him to kill someone. I'm not sure who. He screws it up when a butterfly lands on his gunsight, and suddenly he is on the hit list. He's Number 3 Killer; he doesn't know who the others are, so there are some great claustrophobic scenes in which he tries to figure out who is going to kill him. The mob sends everyone they can find at him, including his own passive-aggressive wife (they have a really strange relationship, which seems to consist of sex and attempted murder). Finally, in a satire of the big showdown scenes of westerns, Number 1 Killer (played by Koji Nambara) basically moves into his house with him, all the while informing him politely that he is going to kill Hanada. These scenes are deliciously funny and odd, as the two men walk arm in arm so as not to let the other out of his sights.

The editing and camerawork are stunning, but they often get in the way of understanding the story. This is not a complaint: I would much rather see a completely original work of art than a straightforward gangster movie. Sex and nudity abounds, there are plenty of artfully staged gun battles and tense dramatic scenes, and Jo Shishido just looks so darned cute with his puffy cheeks that you can't help but root for him.