Kasen chitai (1961)

Two young crooks who scam betters in the race track are employed by a yakuza gang called the Shigemori Syndicate to steal a shipment of handguns from a rival gang. Somewhere in the process they find themselves on the run from their own gang and one of them becomes himself romantically entangled with the boss's girlfriend. An ambitious underboss of the gang offers them a way out if they murder the previous boss but things don't turn out as planned (for everyone). Beneath the generic surface, the story is all about desperate characters who want a way out: the boss's girl who wants to escape her shady past and the men she "belonged to", the two young crooks and their associate who find Japan "claustrophobic" and want to leave for South America. It's all the more ironic then that the only way out for them in the end is death. Thankfully (and unlike American noirs) Ishii's emphasis is not on melodrama, which the final minutes could have easily devolved to, but sardonic irony. Add to that the nice and crisp black and white photography, decent performances and a bunch of shootouts (out in the street, in a warehouse and in a marine), and you've got a nice little b picture with noir undertones that will be sufficiently entertaining for the duration but ultimately forgettable.