[The] departures from the rules of the genre in Naked Youth and The Sun's Burial were evidence that Oshima was more than just an accomplished metteur-en-scène. The violence was too extreme and distasteful to fit the accepted patterns of entertaining rough-stuff. (pp. 63-4)

The Sun's Burial also contains some noticeable departures from the idea of the good story well told—climactic moments of violence are shown in alienating long shots and there's a conspicuous lack of economy in the handling, with a multitude of individually motivated characters all playing a part in the complex thematic sub-structure. Neither The Sun's Burial nor Naked Youth fits into the established emotional modes of crime movies, whether optimistic or pessimistic. Virtue is certainly not triumphant—the good guys don't beat the bad guys, because Oshima does not work in those terms and there are no firm candidates for the position of...