Masami Miyata

4 guys kidnap random people from the street, take them to a remote forest and give them 3 choices: run away, kill us or die. The film follows the fate of one of their victims.

Heat After Dark is director Ryuhei Kitamura's first theatrical release. This 50 minute film is predominantly a character study within an intense action drama. Those familiar with Kitamura's later works, perhaps especially Versus will realize this is the beginning of his characetristic modus operandi. Here, the well defined characters consist of the innocent (the cop), the relatively good (Atsuro Watabe), the relatively bad (Shinichi Suzuki), and the absolutely bad (Shigeru Izumiya ), and a few other Yakuza hoodlums thrown in for entertainment.