Yakuza Princess

 0.5/4

Starring: MASUMI, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Tsuyoshi Ihara

Rated R for Strong Bloody Violence, Some Language and Graphic Nudity

"Yakuza Princess" is the first movie I've seen in a long time that has no pulse.  I mean, it's completely dead.  Even the worst movies like "The Devil All the Time" or "Hold the Dark" generated feelings of bitter hatred at everyone involved in their production.  Here, there's nothing.  There's some activity on the screen, but the movie is running in place.  Watching it is like staring at a blank wall.

I suppose if one pays attention, "Yakuza Princess" has a story.  Akemi (MASUMI) is a Japanese woman living in Sao Paulo, Brazil ("the largest Japanese community in the world," the film tells us).  She has a violent past, and is training in martial arts.  Also in Sao Paulo is an unnamed assassin (Rhys Meyers), who is desperately trying to evade the authorities while looking as obvious, uh, inconspicuous, as possible.  Their two fates are about to collide with a legendary sword.  Then there is a mysterious yakuza member named Takeshi (Ihara) who is on Akemi's trail

Or something like that.  I don't know.  The film didn't take long to lose me.  At first I tried to follow the plot, but the movie never reveals enough about the characters to care about them.  It keeps them at an arm's distance.  Further, it jumps between Sao Paulo and Japan after each scene, further alienating the audience.  I tried to keep up with it for a while, but once I realized that my efforts were leading me to be jerked around like some puppet, I gave up.

The yakuza, and by extension gangsters in general, can provide a wealth of rich material for drama.  I'm replaying the "Yakuza" video game franchise, which is evidence enough to prove I'm right.  Much like in the US, the yakuza have their own film genre.  But this movie isn't interested in telling a story.  Or even creating good action.  It doesn't seem to be interested in doing anything at all except rob people of their lives.

There is an art to creating an action movie.  Many directors, which doubtlessly include Vincente Amorim, believe that showing violence is enough.  It isn't.  It takes a director who knows how to capture the violence in such a way that we can see what is going on in just the right ways.  And unless you're trying to demythologize violence, the violence cannot look improvised.  The audience has to believe it is happening.  "Brotherhood of the Wolf," an infinitely better action movie than this one, is as perfect counterpoint to this one.  Not only do we understand what is going on, we can see the fighters' strategies.  And we care about the people involved.  "Yakuza Princess" is a case study in how not to film action.  It's poorly framed, looks sloppy, and contains zero excitement.

Of course, Christoph Gans's film sought nothing more than to be an exuberant swashbuckler.  "Yakuza Princess" is a gritty techno-thriller.  Fail.  "Moody" lighting and techno beats do not create mood.  The music has to be good and the camerawork must capture movement and expression.  Here, it captures nothing.  It's all wannabe attitude and nothing else.  I'd call it a bunch of smoke and mirrors, but that's too kind.  It's a bunch of broken smoke and mirrors.

Action movie protagonists don't come worse than Akemi.  It isn't that I didn't like her (movie characters do not have to be likable, and in many cases they're more interesting if they aren't).  Nor is she an especially bad actress.  Rather, she's invisible.  I felt nothing for her.  The script provides pop star MASUMI nothing to work with, and the actress is too good to be bad and too bad to be good.  She's just there.  Her more experienced co-star, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, fares worse.  He doesn't have much to do other than look intense and kill people.  He is, however, the only thing worth paying attention to in this movie.  Jonathan Rhys Meyers is a fine actor, and while his career never took off like it should, it deserves better than this.

"Yakuza Princess" is a movie that makes you wonder who put their money behind this.  Did no one halfway through filming realize that something was terribly, disastrously wrong?  This screenplay, which barely contains a hundred words of dialogue, appealed to someone enough to give it a green light?  Or were they so blatantly trying to capture a "world audience" that they only cared about how it looked?

The only reason I'm not giving this movie a big fat zero is because it lacks the hardcore badness that the most wretched movies have.  It's a worthless piece of crap, to be sure.  But I didn't hate it beyond all reason.  I didn't feel anything at all while watching it.  Only the realization that it was stealing my life away and giving me absolutely nothing in return.  It's little more than vapor on the screen.