Yakuza Princess
I think one of the most interesting aspects of “Yakuza Princess” is that the story begins proper in Brazil. After a flashback to a family being massacred in Japan, where a little girl is whisked away, saved from the carnage, we begin in the present day, in Brazil, where two divergent lives with collide over a sword. What makes this work is that we look at the city of Sao Paulo as a place for people to hide from their past as the film goes on. Unfortunately, the past often comes looking for such people. That’s a familiar setup for how people’s lives begin anew.
“Yakuza Princess” is based on a graphic novel, and for the story being told, that makes a lot of sense. Director Vicente Amorim (who co-wrote the adaptation) and cinematographer Gustavo Hadba do a successful job of making us feel like the film is taking us into the world of a comic book as Akemi (MASUMI), the little girl from the opening scene, is being trained to fight while in hiding. Meanwhile, also in town, is a man in a hospital (played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers), who has lost his memory. He has scars on his face, and was found with a katana sword. Meanwhile, in Japan, an assassin for the Yakuza (Takashi, played by Tsuyoshi Ihara), gets wind of her survival, and travels to Brazil to take care of her. Cue the action scenes.
This is a movie more about action, style and keeping us entertained while also setting up future stories with these characters. In this department, it succeeds for the most part. I’ll admit that I wasn’t terribly engaged with the story, and feel like it probably could have parsed out information quicker to not only hold to the formula of one’s past catching up to them quicker, but I still loved watching this film. The action scenes deliver the goods, and I love the images in this film, from a fight in Akemi’s apartment to Meyers’s character making his way out of the hospital he’s in to a scene late in the film where Akemi is walking through a graveyard where here ancestors are laid to rest. Visual beauty and harsh brutality go hand-in-hand in this film, and it’s a great ride when those things combine. If there had been more meat on the bones with these characters, though, I think it might have been something interesting and special. As it is, this is a familiar formula we’ve seen before, and will see many more times to come.
