As an European, saying that a Japanese film is offbeat is nearly a pleonasm. Most of them are offbeat, weird, from western eyes or point of views. This scheme is very similar to John Badham's THE GUN, the TV show DEAD MAN'S GUN or the classic WINCHESTER 73. I you have seen at least one of those you will get what I mean. This is a story telling the fates of different people, in a middle class town of Japan. Nothing to do with Yakyzas or depressing atmosphere of the post WW2 social misery, although from a certain point of view this film is not so optimistic. This is also the story of a gun through its different owners, and not because of sales...The film takes its time to really begin, the time for the audiences to familiarize with the opponents of this drama, but not really crime film. Very good and captivating feature which would deserve to be discovered world wide. I don't understand that no comments are on this page, only mine.