Yakuza Weapon

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Feb 7, 2017 With the Monster Pictures label as its distribution company, Yakuza Weapon sounded like an entertainingly violent cult experience. The visual style of Yakuza Weapon is very troublesome. And given that the film is one which focuses more on style than narrative, this is problematic. It's clear from the beginning that visuals will be an issue because the film opens with an action scene full of potential with only meandering success. The fight choreography appears to be all solid and the use of cheap explosion effects matches the film's sense of humour, but the impression is still not that strong. First of all, the colour scheme seems all wrong because the film is far too bright to be a convincingly gritty film. It's obvious the film doesn't attempt to go for the most sophisticated detail since it is obviously cheap in many areas for comic effect, but it just feels lazy in the intro. A slightly grimmer colour scheme could have made the film a lot more convincing, but that's not the ultimate result. However, the greater issue in the film is the endless abundance of shakycam. The film kicks off with an action scene which is shot not only far too close to capture everything, but with far too many shakes for its own good. You can still pick on the fact that the actors are putting in a strong effort with the stunt choreography, but with all the shaking going on it is difficult to appreciate it in its full potential. Add this to the fact that the camera minimizes the focus to a very small portion of the actors with an excess of zoom and you've got a director of photography who is certified in the art of mediocrity. There are some occasional shots where the technique aims for greater ambition such as the long single-take fight scene from later on down the track, but when the film kicks off with poor camera work which it cannot shake throughout nearly any of the scenes that should be exciting, it becomes a challenge to enjoy the film to the full extent of its ambitions. This technique continues on into the scenes where the characters are just sitting around and talking. The dialogue is supposed to be characterizing the events and building up intensity before the next action scene, but the entire mood is distracted by the constant shaking with the camera. Scenes like this should be stable so that there is greater focus on the characters and a more naturally occurring tension, but since the camera shakes everywhere it becomes too much of a distraction which disables the atmospheric potential of the sequence. It's annoying enough that the camera has to interfere with the most exciting moments in the film, but when it continues to make the mistakes in every other moment it just becomes clear that the director of photography is too amateur. In the case of Yakuza Weapon, all the entertainment in the experience boils down to the action scenes because the film uses an intentionally generic plot and one-dimensional characters simple as an excuse to pull together a cast of talented choreographers and bargain-bin visual effects for a cheap exploitation experience. The generic dialogue can be dull when the characters get talkative, but the film is back to delivering the action in no time. And given that the choreography in the film is clearly decent, there needs to be greater appreciation of it by the directors Tak Sakaguchi and Yudai Yamaguchi. Instead, they leave Masakazu Oka to handle the cinematography and leave some unmistakable damage on the film. It honestly doesn't make sense because the film goes for a B-movie style of exploitation yet shakycam is not a technique implemented into such a film all that much. In fact, it is the technique which is ensuring that Hollywood action cinema is going into a rapid decline due to the abysmal result of travesties such as Taken 2 (2012) and A Good Day to Die Hard (2013). With Yakuza Weapon succumbing to the same technical errors yet lacking any of the superior production values to disguise itself, it fails to make any much of an impression. However, I will give a modicum of praise to the film. Despite its technical faults, the film is not one to be held to the same standard of the larger-budget films it parodies because it doesn't realy care. It is just bent on having a fun time with a ridiculous plot, and it pursues this with an endless flurry of action scenes. The camera may be annoying, but it is still possible to look past it fairly often simply to appreciate the cheap thrills of the film. You can see that an effort is really made with the choreography even if they have to rush it at times, and the cheap visual effects provide some appropriately laughable explosions and blood to hit the screen. The film certainly has a sense of humour about itself which it isn't shy about showing off with its visual style, and the actors are appropriately over the top with their relentlessly stereotypical performances. Though there are no real characters to come with them, the cast nevertheless remain insanely dedicated to taking on the story with such intensity that they help to bring it to life. Even though Yakuza Weapon is a film which was shot in a period of only 12 days, everyone has clearly made a dedicated effort to bring out the best they can. And even though Masakazu Oka needs to find a better job than being a director of photography, he doesn't prevent everyone else's efforts from at least being recognizable. Yakuza Weapon's sense of humour, cheap visual effects and decent stunt choreography give it a handful of decent action scenes, but the viewer must resists some extremely poor cinematography if they are to embrace the best part of a film which offers nothing else in terms of character development or story originality. See more Nov 24, 2013 A bit of a strange film, not too shabby, but it's nothing too special either. Shooting rockets out of your vagina now... That's something else... See more Mar 10, 2013 Batshit, over the top insanity. I dug it. See more Jul 29, 2012 A bit over the top. It's pretty goofy most of the time. The story is about a bad as super fighter who gets a gun arm... However, the action is pretty good. I like the actor. And it's pretty entertaining. See more Apr 19, 2012 over the wall krazyness with a bit more budget this movie would be hella sick See more Apr 13, 2012 A Sushi Typhoon starring Sakaguchi, directed by him and the director of Meatball Machine? Sign me up! Hilarious, ridiculous, lots of fun. Suffers from a low budget, but it's quite imaginative. Awesome end song, strange ending, really makes me want to read the manga. It was shot in only 12 days. See more Read all reviews

Yakuza Weapon

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