Teruo Ishii's sequel to Norifumi Suzuki's outrageously entertaining Sex and Fury unfortunately isn't anything to write home about, as it is weaker than its predecessor in almost any way. Reiko Ike returns as Ocho Inoshika, and the film starts with an obligatory sequence where she slaughters some thugs while naked, but that's pretty much all these two films have in common.
Female Yakuza Tale suffers from a boring, convoluted plot with pointless characters and awful dialogues. Even though the story is about a Yakuza clan that uses a gang of female thieves for them to smuggle drugs in their vaginas, the film fails to properly execute that bizarre concept. There's also Osho's backstory, which sees her getting saved from having to cut off a finger by a Yakuza kingpin, who then gets murdered by the current boss, who also kidnaps his daughter and puts her in a mental hospital with kabuki-practicing mimes. As ridiculous as it all sounds, the film is quite boring and it feels like it lasts much longer than 85 minutes.
There's also a supporting character, this guy who, despite throwing bullets into people's nostrils and glasses and shooting their moustache off, is not charismatic at all. He's helped by a female prisoner Scorpion lookalike, some Christian assassin who "prays before she kills", who barely contributes anything and about whom we learn nothing. The visual style is almost ordinary compared to Sex and Fury, the comical scenes mostly miss their mark, and the soundtrack is some kind of a mix between '70s funky music, bouncing springs and Ocho's theme song (?) sung by Reiko Ike in the final scene where she walks off into the Sun (not a sunset, just the sun).
The action is scarce and the sex scenes are numerous but poorly executed, except for the one where Ocho has sex with the boss. It's all just an unfocused mess, where you're never sure if the sex scenes are here to serve as filler to the plot or the plot is just jumbled together to string the sex scenes together (okay, it's definitely the second one). However, the climax of the film is so outrageous and hilarious that it makes up for the rest of the film. The gang of naked female thieves fights against the clothed male gangsters in an epic display of playing card blades, bullets, knives, swords, píss, bottles of cocaine, fists and frantic editing. Has to be seen to be believed.
Female Yakuza Tale suffers from a boring, convoluted plot with pointless characters and awful dialogues. Even though the story is about a Yakuza clan that uses a gang of female thieves for them to smuggle drugs in their vaginas, the film fails to properly execute that bizarre concept. There's also Osho's backstory, which sees her getting saved from having to cut off a finger by a Yakuza kingpin, who then gets murdered by the current boss, who also kidnaps his daughter and puts her in a mental hospital with kabuki-practicing mimes. As ridiculous as it all sounds, the film is quite boring and it feels like it lasts much longer than 85 minutes.
There's also a supporting character, this guy who, despite throwing bullets into people's nostrils and glasses and shooting their moustache off, is not charismatic at all. He's helped by a female prisoner Scorpion lookalike, some Christian assassin who "prays before she kills", who barely contributes anything and about whom we learn nothing. The visual style is almost ordinary compared to Sex and Fury, the comical scenes mostly miss their mark, and the soundtrack is some kind of a mix between '70s funky music, bouncing springs and Ocho's theme song (?) sung by Reiko Ike in the final scene where she walks off into the Sun (not a sunset, just the sun).
The action is scarce and the sex scenes are numerous but poorly executed, except for the one where Ocho has sex with the boss. It's all just an unfocused mess, where you're never sure if the sex scenes are here to serve as filler to the plot or the plot is just jumbled together to string the sex scenes together (okay, it's definitely the second one). However, the climax of the film is so outrageous and hilarious that it makes up for the rest of the film. The gang of naked female thieves fights against the clothed male gangsters in an epic display of playing card blades, bullets, knives, swords, píss, bottles of cocaine, fists and frantic editing. Has to be seen to be believed.