Kitano had hardly finished "Violent Cop", before he began making his second film. During the postproduction of "Violent Cop" he talked with Shochiku about a second feature and his story. When he told them, that it was involved yakuza, Nabeshima told him, that it was perfect and insisted that Kitano played the part, which Kitano later joked about, as he intended to do that anyway. 
Masaki (Yanagi) is slow of mind. He loves baseball, but lacking of talent, he is largely ignored by almost every one of "The Eagles", the local baseball team, only having one friend. When not playing baseball, he works at a gas station, where he washes cars and performs odd jobs.
One day Kanai, a yakuza underboss, is at the gas station to get his car washed. Masaki has hardly begun, before Kanai begins to critic him, finally hitting Masaki. The owner of the gas station apologizes, but little it helps. Masaki steps up to Kanai and takes a swing at him, hardly hitting, yet Kanai insists that his arm is broken.
The next day Kanai's boss visits the gas station to have a friendly talk with the owner. The owner offers to pay all medical bills, but that's not enough. Masaki seeks advice from Igushi, the manager of "The Eagles" and former yakuza boss now bar owner, who goes to their headquarter to sort things out in a friendly way. But he is no longer yakuza, his word no longer has weight. Feeling humiliated, he beats up the boss.
The next day Masaki is at baseball again, as always, being overlooked, as always. But he has found confidence and insists of being put on the substitute list. When the team suddenly is in dire need of a hitter, and Masaki is the only one left, he gets to play and hits a home run. The same evening the yakuza beat up Igushi.
Igushi wont go to a doctor, nor move away. Instead he closes down his bar until further notice and plans to go to Okinawa to get a gun, when he gets better, so he can kill those who beat him up. Masaki volunteers to go to Okinawa and his friend goes along, as he knows a yakuza there.
That yakuza is Uehara (Kitano), who is in trouble, as he stole a lot of money and has to return it, and a finger, the next day. After a wild night out, they all go to the beach, and later that day they meet up with an American GI, from whom they are to buy guns. But Uehara shots the GI, takes all the guns, except two and leaves Masaki and his friend behind. Uehara then drives up to the yakuza headquarter and kills his bosses. Uehara is later killed at the airport after having given Masaki a farewell present.
Coming back to Tokyo, they instantly attack the yakuza headquarter, but their plan is so stupid, that they are caught. By pure luck, Masaki gets away. The others are beaten up. The same evening Masaki steals a gas truck at the gas station and drives it into the yakuza headquarter, where it explodes.
The script is a mess. Being Kitano's first original story, it is very uneven. On occasions it feels like a Kaurismäki or Jarmusch story, on occasions it feels like the Kitano we know, but it also has passages, where it simply can't get a foothold. These passages are especially in the scenes involving Kitano himself. Most likely they are so uneven because he wanted to distance himself from, his at that time, persona. But in an attempt to distance himself, he pulls the story apart.
However flawed the story is, there are moments where his humour shines thru. The drinking of squid ink sequence, the picking flowers sequence, the sharing of ice cream and many more. These kitanoesque moments will in time be one of his trademarks. Other kitanoesque elements used here are his approach to the sea (the shore motif) and how it represents a turning point.
When shooting "Violent Cop", Kitano spoke out on being reluctant to move the camera. Here, basically the entire film is made up by static frame compositions. The camera hardly moves and when it does, its only for a short pan or a controlled dolly shot to follow a character (moving static frame).
"Boling Point" also marks Kitano's first venture into editing. Kitano seems very occupied with elliptical editing and how ellipses can isolate cause and effect, both onscreen (Masaki hitting Kanai, The owner apologizes) and offscreen (the motorcycle accident). Another type of elliptic editing is the isolating actions over and over again to illustrate patterns (repetitive: playing baseball at the beach). A last type of elliptic editing that Kitano introduces here is what Bruce Kawin calls "Mindscreens": short, elliptic, pro- and analepses in random order. Kitano uses it to forward the death of Uehara, but also to reflect on the fatalism.
Returning to the story, it opens and ends with Masaki in the darkness of a toilet at the baseball field, hence indicating that the entire story took place in his head. Holding on that thought, we can trace the plot points: Masaki gets on the team and hits a home run, he confronts a yakuza and hits him, he gets a girl friend, he goes to Okinawa, he is respected by Uehara even gets a farewell present (the butterfly eggs) and it is finally him, who blows up the yakuza headquarter. Having done so, its easy to see, that the entire story is a day dream Masaki is having while sitting on the toilet.
Looking at it in retrospect, "Boiling Point", stands out as a very flawed film, where Kitano plays around with elliptic editing and frame composition. It is also notable, that Kitano does everything he can to be totally unlikable. He is intrusive, controlling, misogynistic, a rapist and violent. One can understand his desire to get rid of his image as funny man, but he is here taking on to many extremes. Kitano reflects on this in an interview and regrets shaping his character as he did.
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