Meantime, when our protagonist turns 21, Akemi learns she is no ordinary orphan. Good luck finding an English copy of it if you want to analyze its origins. Basically, they amount to the Asian equivalent of the Italian Mafia.Īfter it opens with a bloody massacre at a birthday party in Osaka, Japan, "Yakuza Princess" plays out primarily in São Paulo, Brazil, an enclave that quarters "the largest Japanese community in the world." Austrian director Vincent Amorin and three credited co-writers, who adapted Danilo Beyruth's 192-page, graphic novel "Samurai Shiro," take advantage of the source material's unique setting. In their native language, the Yakuza are referred to as either the gokudo or boryokudan, an organized, multinational, crime syndicate with origins going as far back in Japanese history as the 17th century. Sometimes, these hardcases severe the tip of their pinky finger to assert their sense of loyalty. They gripe about honor or the lack of it when they confront each other. These nihilistic but natty Japanese gangsters adorn their epidermis with a tapestry of tattoos. As a general rule, brief but bloodthirsty violence punctuate Yakuza films. The double-digit body count in Amorin's film includes flying hands and heads severed with utmost surgical skill. Indeed, this uneven but edgy saga lives up to the word Yakuza in its title. Our Cinderella protagonist discovers she is no shrinking violent, while Shiro struggles to recover his own memory. Together, this improbable pair hack and whack their weight in nonstop assailants galore before a trigger-happy Yakuza gunsel, Takeshi (Tsuyoshi Ihara of "Last Knights"), joins them. Eventually, he confiscates another man's apparel in a washroom. He has an R-rated "Terminator" scene when he parades around a hospital in his birthday suit searching for suitable attire.
Indeed, this is Meyers as you've never before seen the Irish thespian. Akemi (pop singer & songwriter Masumi) benefits from the timely intrusion of a white, Anglo-Saxon, Jason Bourne amnesiac, Shiro (Jonathan Rhys Meyers of "Black Butterfly"), whose face has been carved up with hieroglyphic scars. Our 21-year-old heroine is a simple-minded, knickknacks store clerk who comes out of her cocoon and pay backs those who all but annihilated her bloodline. "Motorrad" director Vincente Amorin orchestrates several scenes of hyperbolic, close quarters combat that illustrates the resilience of the sole survivor of a slaughtered Asian crime clan. Slash & gash swordplay and artsy-fartsy cinematography invigorate the violent Brazilian actioneer "Yakuza Princess" that suffers marginally from stereotypical characters and complicated storytelling.
Reviewed by zardoz-13 7 / 10 A Cinderella Tale, Yakuza Style
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