"Yakuza films have been well trod and explored over the years, so if you're going to plunge yourself into that genre you should really be telling a uniquely gripping tale. This, however, does not.
We follow a prisoner [Leto] who helps a fellow inmate escape, who in turn gets him out and a job with a Yakuza family. It's your typical white man inserted into a foreign land that comes with all the stodgy and predictable cliches that hover like flies around the corpse of a well beaten premise.
Every scene has potential but it falls flat, from washed out colour and set design to turgid pacing. Leto is going for nihilistic intensity, but it comes off more stoic and bored - the line between subtle and uninteresting is unreadable.
Lazy tension builders lead us to a frantic conclusion we hardly care about, a rush job finish to an overstuffed runtime"
- 4/10
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