In 2003, a Hokkaido cop named Yoshiaki Inaba was sentenced to nine years in jail, on charges including drug use and possession with intent to supply. During his trial, the former police inspector revealed that his impressive career record had involved an unhealthy degree of collusion with contacts in the criminal underworld. Prior to his arrest, he'd been selling stimulants in order to purchase illegal firearms that he then turned in to the police department — and, he claimed, doing so with official approval.

This sordid tale of professional misconduct was a natural candidate for the big-screen treatment, and Hokkaido native Kazuya Shiraishi would seem like the right man for the job. The director's previous film, sophomore effort "The Devil's Path," turned another real-life crime story into a bleak, genuinely unsettling drama that was one of the finest Japanese movies of 2013.

Maybe the studio executives asked Shiraishi to make his follow-up a little lighter, because "Twisted Justice" strikes an altogether different tone. Working from a script by journeyman screenwriter Junya Ikegami, the director has attempted to fashion a blackly comic caper from a story that would probably have benefitted from a grittier approach. It's jaunty and fast-paced, full of overripe performances and infected with an outlandish sensibility that sits uncomfortably with the subject matter; think "Violent Cop" meets "Bayside Shakedown."