Review for Yakuza Hunters 2: The Revenge Duel In Hell

Introduction

A prostitute gets split open at the crotch with a chainsaw (onscreen). A baby is impaled with a samurai sword (off-screen). Are you repelled, or morbidly intrigued? Depending which way you answer will determine whether Yakuza Hunters 2: The Revenge Duel in Hell is for you. It's time for some more low budget Japanese action cinema, it's time for some more delectable Asami antics on screen, and it's time for some more of the violence and gore that is the bread and butter of certain cult cinema fanatics. It's been six weeks since my review of Yakuza Hunters: The Ultimate Battle Royale. That's six weeks too long. Thankfully, Cine du Monde have more to deliver from this particular niche of Asian sinema (sic).

Yakuza Hunter Asami is back in town, after three years away following the events of the first movie. She's looking for a place to shelter, and she finds it with Miki, the original Yakuza Hunter, who's now living alone with her baby son since her husband left. Staying with Miki helps Asami reconnect with her human side, and she discovers a talent for pachinko. But the town has changed in the years she was away, and it's changed for the worse. The Shoryu Yakuza group now controls the neighbourhood, and they have big plans for the area, plans which involve evicting all the residents first. When Asami arrives back, there are only five holdouts remaining, and the Yakuza are getting nasty when it comes to persuading them. Of course Asami and Miki don't stand for any nonsense, but the Yakuza boss Murakame remembers Asami, and he hires a particularly lethal killer named Akira to take care of her. On the back foot, the people she cares about targeted, Asami will have to train up to be capable of challenging this new foe.

The Disc

Cine du Monde only supplied a single layer DVD-R for review, but it looks like a final release disc, complete with animated menus and extras. The image is an NTSC 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation, while the audio comes in DD 2.0 Stereo Japanese form. Optional English subtitles are available in a rather small font, while the only extras on this disc are the theatrical trailer, and trailers for five other Cine du Monde films, including the first, Yakuza Hunters: The Ultimate Battle Royale.

It is a low budget film, so the digital cinematography is rough and ready but quite effective; with the only nitpick being the usual shakycam during action sequences. There's been something of a learning curve since the first film though, as there is more of a professional sheen to proceedings, a more consistent look to the film, less CGI blood, while the music goes for the full Spaghetti Western motif this time around, paying homage to the Morricone scores from the Clint Eastwood movies.

Conclusion

Asami is back! And so are her fingers, and come to think of it, so are the chief villain's eyeballs. Continuity is just an optional extra in this movie. But who cares, when you have all the low budget action, violence and gore that you could possibly want. Yakuza Hunters 2 is another action flick in the same vein as the first one, but whereas the first paid homage to the seventies blaxsploitation era in terms of its music and fashions, Yakuza Hunters 2 looks to Spaghetti Western movies for its inspiration. The costumes, the music, the extreme close-ups, the heat haze and the weighted pauses before extreme bursts of action all hark back to those particular movies of the sixties. It also has the slightly greater production values that help carry it off. But I have to say that the charm of Yakuza Hunters has faded somewhat. That's despite this second film being shorter than the first, avoiding much of the sag that slowed it down.

Those two scenes that I mentioned in the opening paragraph for one mark this as a somewhat nastier piece of work than the first film, and it's lacking the warped sense of humour that would balance it. Asami isn't going through this film, collecting her enemies' pinky fingers to use them as ammo against them. Also, the action seems comparatively limited in this one, with more of an emphasis on gunplay than martial arts and swords. There's really only one action set piece that appeals, and that happens in the middle of the movie, not at the climax. In aping the Man with No Name tone of the spaghetti westerns, Asami plays it as the lone drifter that wanders into town, wreaking vengeance on her foes when she is wronged. It's all well and good given the milieu, but I miss the ensemble feel of the first film, where it was a band of girls fighting the Yakuza. To top things of, Asami is 'romanced' by the limpest wet fish male romantic interest imaginable. Every scene that Yuji appears in extends the film's effective runtime by another twenty minutes.

Yakuza Hunters 2 looks and sounds better than the first film, but that's only technically. It's just not as much fun as the first, and in low budget cinema like this, fun is the most important thing.