20131220: Action Review--Yakuza-Busting Girls: Duel in Hell

Yakuza-Busting Girls: Duel in Hell

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. Japanese live action feature length film, 2010, NR, 75 minutes, action.  Spoken word is in Japanese; subtitles in English.
2. IMDb: 5.1/10.0 from 52 audience ratings.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet...' and 'No scores yet'; only a stub page.
4. Netflix: 2.5/5.0 from 3,465 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: Kazushi Nakadaira.
6. Starring: Asami as Asami the Yakusa hunter, Naoki Kawano, Hitomi Miwa as Akira.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Asami has fought gangsters before and does some more in this film.  She gets taken in by a family, and a good third of the film seems to be the group just waiting around, going to the arcade, chatting while getting drunk, and other mundane activities.


2. Every so often, some evil doer shows up, and Asami fights them.  She dispatches a couple one night, then has to fight Akira. That ends badly for Asami.


3. More people get hurt after Asami recovers.  Asami gets more galvanized.


4. Will Asami prevail against the gang violence?  If she gets that far, will she get revenge versus Akira?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: A bad 21st century spaghetti western in Japan plus gore fest.
2. One star of five.  Two black holes for acting and screenplay.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 6/10 Lots of bad lighting. The spaghetti western camera work (shooting through heat mirages, long shots with narrow focus, filtered shots of the sun, and so on) were so-so and did not add that much.


2. Sound: 6/10 Incidental music reminiscent of Spaghetti westerns.  Spoken word seemed clear enough.  Foley was a little exaggerated, but that's common enough in such films.


3. Acting: 2/10 Bad.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Bizarre mix of low level silliness (documenting playing kids' arcarde games; women giggling while getting drunk), comedy, cult nonsense, gore fest, and spaghetti western traditions.  None of it was very good, and the disparate pieces did not fit together well at all.  Incredible cruelty for the sake of amusement was much too common.  Catching bullets in the bare hands?  Done three times, but should not have been done once.