The lone, wandering gangster is as standard a figure in Japanese cinema as the lone, wandering samurai. Traditionally, both fought out of a self-imposed sense of duty and obligation.
In modern-day incarnations of these figures, such as the exiled-to-Taiwan hitman in Takashi Miike's "Rainy Dog" (1997), the macho romanticism of older films may be alive and well, but there is often a grittier realism. Relentlessly pursued by his enemies, Miike's hero is more like a hunted animal than a noble warrior.
Yoshihiro Hanno's "Paradise Next" also has an on-the-run gangster hero and a Taiwan setting, but the resemblances to Miike's genre classic end there. A composer who has worked with Jia Zhangke, Hou Hsiao-Hsien and other Asian auteurs, the Paris-based Hanno has created an eclectic score for his third film as a director, including an elegiac theme by friend and colleague Ryuichi Sakamoto that perfectly captures the film's mood of evanescence, longing and regret.