Slash & gash swordplay and artsy-fartsy cinematography invigorate the violent Brazilian actioneer "Yakuza Princess" that suffers marginally from stereotypical characters and complicated storytelling. "Motorrad" director Vincente Amorin orchestrates several scenes of hyperbolic, close quarters combat that illustrates the resilience of the sole survivor of a slaughtered Asian crime clan. Our 21-year-old heroine is a simple-minded, knickknacks store clerk who comes out of her cocoon and pay backs those who all but annihilated her bloodline. Akemi (pop singer & songwriter Masumi) benefits from the timely intrusion of a white, Anglo-Saxon, Jason Bourne amnesiac, Shiro (Jonathan Rhys Meyers of "Black Butterfly"), whose face has been carved up with hieroglyphic scars. Indeed, this is Meyers as you've never before seen the Irish thespian. He has an R-rated "Terminator" scene when he parades around a hospital in his birthday suit searching for suitable attire. Eventually, he confiscates another man's apparel in a washroom. Together, this improbable pair hack and whack their weight in nonstop assailants galore before a trigger-happy Yakuza gunsel, Takeshi (Tsuyoshi Ihara of "Last Knights"), joins them. Our Cinderella protagonist discovers she is no shrinking violent, while Shiro struggles to recover his own memory. Indeed, this uneven but edgy saga lives up to the word Yakuza in its title. The double-digit body count in Amorin's film includes flying hands and heads severed with utmost surgical skill. As a general rule, brief but bloodthirsty violence punctuate Yakuza films. These nihilistic but natty Japanese gangsters adorn their epidermis with a tapestry of tattoos. They gripe about honor or the lack of it when they confront each other. Sometimes, these hardcases severe the tip of their pinky finger to assert their sense of loyalty. In their native language, the Yakuza are referred to as either the gokudo or boryokudan, an organized, multinational, crime syndicate with origins going as far back in Japanese history as the 17th century. Basically, they amount to the Asian equivalent of the Italian Mafia.
After it opens with a bloody massacre at a birthday party in Osaka, Japan, "Yakuza Princess" plays out primarily in São Paulo, Brazil, an enclave that quarters "the largest Japanese community in the world." Austrian director Vincent Amorin and three credited co-writers, who adapted Danilo Beyruth's 192-page, graphic novel "Samurai Shiro," take advantage of the source material's unique setting. Good luck finding an English copy of it if you want to analyze its origins. Meantime, when our protagonist turns 21, Akemi learns she is no ordinary orphan. She barely remembers being taken into exile after the massacre to live in São Paulo, where friends of her late crime syndicate godfather have concealed her from the Yakuza. At this point, everything changes when a westerner searching for her awakens in a hospital without his memory. The local authorities want to know how he came to possess an ancient ceremonial Kantana. Before they can interrogate Shiro at length, he vanishes from the hospital with the sword. This Kantana exerts a mysticism over Shiro that prompts him to inquire about it at a pawn shop. The pawn shop owner informs the westerner that some bad men have been asking around for it.
Later, when Akemi goes out to celebrate her birthday at a nightclub with a female friend, a group of obnoxious louts accost her, and Akemi gives them a beating they won't forget. Since age six, she has been trained by her sensei, Chiba (Toshiji Takeshima), in the art of self-defense. Repeatedly, Chiba has warned Akemi that she must perfect her combat skills. "Let discipline shape your spirit and mind. You and your sword must become one. Allow this principle to guide you in your journey. Nothing must stand between you and your sword. By this time, the Kantana leads Shiro to Akemi's apartment where the thugs who harassed her in the nightclub are poised to rape her. At this point, Takeshi intervenes in the fight, too. Hurriedly, Akemi and Shiro escape before the Yakuza gunman can corner them. By the 50-minute mark, Amorin has introduced the three main characters who converge on each other. Eventually, the truth comes out about him. Takeshi explains that he warned Akemi's father about a plot to assassinate him, but he failed to take advantage of Takeshi's information. Furthermore, Takeshi believes Shiro isn't Akemi's guardian angel.
Edited with attention-deficit audiences in mind, "Yakuza Princess" never bogs down in exposition. Amorin and his writers parcel the exposition out in bread crumbs, though it may still prove bewildering for some spectators, especially during the final showdown when our heroine is torn between believing the motives of either Takeshi or Shiro. Amorin stages the acrobatic, gravity-defying skirmishes with eye-catching allure. Lenser Gustavo Hadba, who photographed Amorin's earlier film "The Division" (2020), preserves the eccentric camera angles inherent in all graphic novels and propels us into the vortex of the combat. The pictorial content is always refreshing and keeps the action and intrigue moving forward at a whirlwind pace. Meantime, Amorin directs "Yakuza Princess" like a music video stretched out to feature length at 101 minutes. As the bodies stack up, "Yakuza Princess" concludes at night on a helicopter landing pad atop a towering skyscraper. Clearly, Amorin makes a bid for a potential sequel with an ending that leaves Akemi poised to return to Osaka and exact revenge on the mobster who ordered the slaughter of her clan. In her motion picture debut, Masumi emerges as a sympathetic but tough-minded heroine. A guilty pleasure at best, "Yakuza Princess" doesn't pull any punches and provides a surprise at fadeout about one of Akemi's colleagues that will keep you guessing about this individual.
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