It’s hard for a company when one of your branches underperforms. Even harder when you’re the Yakuza, and bad PR undermines all that you’ve stolen, killed and intimidated for for so long.
In a small Japanese town two yakuza gangs are bickering. Nothing perilous, but it is placing the ceasefire between the rivals at risk.
Murikawa (Beat Takeshi) is sent in with a small crew to nip the childishness in the bud.
Weirdness ensues.
Think lengthy periods of inactivity and bizarre interspersed occasionally by sudden graphic violence. When Takeshi closed out his Zatoichi reboot with an odd musical sequence it was hailed as a triumph, there are four or five such sequences here, to which I cry overkill.
Murikawa always dresses sharp but his expression does not match the threads. All wait and no kill makes any yakuza… Not yakuza. Takeshi Kitano / Beat Takeshi has made his name with violent yakuza films, consider this a perplexing misfire.
Final Rating – 5.5 / 10. In the case of Sonatine one should not expect ‘gang war’, more ‘Ferris Musikawa’s Season Off’.
