This entry in to the increasingly busy genre stars Jared Leto as the only non-Japanese in an Osaka prison. We don’t know his back-story but he has a bushy beard so it may be something to do with razor blades. He has a lowly job in the prison and has to defer to the Yakuza gangster inmates who are identifiable by their extensive tattoos.
Leto’s character ‘Nick’ saves one man from a hanging and later assists in an escape attempt when he helpfully calls the guards when his cell mate slices open his belly. The local Yakuza clan thank Nick for his efforts and get him out of jail. They also give him a job, but not one with many prospects as it involves braining an unhelpful American factory owner with a typewriter.
His new bosses are impressed and soon Leto has a suit and a tattoo of his own. His clan aren’t the strongest however, with some rivals trying to muscle in on their territory. Nick stops one incursion but has to give up two fingers when his ageing boss send over the digits as an apology rather than risk a war. That’ll be the end of his fledgling ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ career.
Nick’s family’s troubles suggest there is a rat in the camp and when it’s revealed to be his boss there is no surprise whatsoever. This nasty piece of work also makes moves on Nick’s girlfriend who is pregnant and is also involved in a big pow-wow at the docks which was a bad plan from the off. Elsewhere Nick’s back story is touched upon when he bumps into an old army colleague who suggests Nick’s appearance is a surprise and may be of interest to the military. I wouldn’t be taking any invites home if I was that guy!
With a big showdown looming who can we trust and will Nick manage to win the respect of a frankly odious bunch of gangsters?
This film started out well but lost it’s way, with the ending being a right load of old cobblers. The main failing was the character of Nick himself. It’s thinly written with no backstory at all. This starts off OK with Nick being all intense and mysterious but later on, with nothing revealed, you can be forgiven for wondering ‘Why should I care?’. We don’t know why Nick is in jail , looking like the ghost of David Bellamy, and we don’t know why he’s attracted to the Yakuza - maybe it’s the suits and the staring.
Although a Netflix film, the production is lavish with post war Japan brilliantly realised. There are plenty of gory slayings and some brutal finger choppings, none of which I could watch. Even the ‘thunk’ as the blade slices through - urrgh!
It’s not clear what the girl sees in Nick who is clearly certifiable. The Yakuza all seem quite welcoming too apart from the usual ‘white dog’ insults. Maybe they just see him as someone not scared of doing the dirty work.
I don’t think I learned anything here and the entertainment value was negligible. None of the characters engaged with me and for all his starey silences Nick just came across as a rudderless psycho with the charisma of a stale won-ton. The Japanese henchmen were mostly subtitled apart from when they tried a bit of English, but you wished those bits had been subtitled too.
You get all the usual gubblins about honour, but of course they are all stabbing each other in the back, or slicing the throat to be more exact, every chance they get.
The film is nice to look at but a strong win for style over substance.
The Tag Line : I’ll just slice that for you…
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