The best Shima Onishi’s thriller movies

The film is told in three acts, beginning with a historical background of Japan's student movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, mostly using archive footage and a narrator. The second act follows the formation of the group to their mountain training camps in the southern Japanese Alps. It emphasizes the dogmatic (and eventually hypocritical) bullying of the group by Mori and Nagata, with 12 members being killed for infractions as small as improperly cleaning a gun, wearing make-up, and kissing. The third act shows the splitting up of the group after two members run off. It follows one group of five members to Karuizawa and a hostage-taking and police standoff known as the Asama-Sansō incident.

An ex-journalist Masuda whose article caused a scandalous fatality now works at a small factory. He learns that his colleague Suzuki is a former convict who killed some children back in middle school. Trying to get back his old job, Masuda secretly starts to write a piece on Suzuki while befriending him. The more he learns about his colleague, however, the more Masuda remembers his younger self, a boy who triggered his classmate's suicide.

“Hana-Dama”—a flower in the wasteland. This flower is a symbol of earthly desires and every human is overwhelmed by desire and their rationality collapses wherever the flower is in bloom. And even today, the “Hana-Dama” continues to blossom profusely somewhere in the world. The story is set in a film theater, the facility keeps on closing one after another during recent years. The last day has come to a film theater which has been maintained by a film-loving owner, the staff, and their unique audiences. The symbol of human desire, “Hana-Dama,” blossoms at the theater and instigates people’s erratic behavior. Upon facing its closure, tremendous chaos that will be noted in the history of Japanese film takes place within this film theater.