Stumbling upon the 2024 action movie "Yakuza Girl" by random chance here in 2025, and with it being a movie that I had neither heard about nor seen, then of course I opted to check out what writer and director Louis DeStefano had to offer here.
I have to say, though, that given the movie's glorious 2.3 rating on IMDb, as of this very moment when I watched the movie, then I harbored no expectations to the movie. But who knows, perhaps I would be pleasantly surprised.
And seeing that Louis DeStefano was also starring in the movie, and thus writing, directing and starring in the movie, well it just made so many alarm clocks go off. Movies that have one guy in all those aspects of movie making generally tend to be tedious and questionable affairs. So perhaps there was a reason for the fantastic 2.3 rating that the movie had landed.
The storyline that Louis DeStefano had conjured up was a massive swing and a miss, and it utterly failed to entertain me. The narrative was pointless, the pacing was atrociously slow, and the character gallery was just a downright dud. As for "Yakuza Girl" being an action movie? Don't get your hopes up.
I was not familiar with a single actress or actor on the cast list. And that was actually something that spoke in favor of the movie, as I do enjoy watching new and unfamiliar talents on the screen whenever I watch a movie. Marco Torres, playing the Japanese police chief, delivered some of the most laughable and wooden dialogue I have witnessed in a long, long time. Actually the acting performances in "Yakuza Girl" were questionable at best.
Why would the Japanese people be speaking English in Japan? It made zero sense, and that thick Japanese accent didn't exactly help to make it any more convincing.
There was some insanely annoying piano music playing in the movie which just made no sense, as it was disrupting the scenes and just felt so out of place with the events that took place in the scenes, as the music was overly dramatic, but the scenes much less so.
Should you happen to stumble upon this 2024 movie named "Yakuza Girl", give it a wide berth. It is a terrible movie, through and through. I gave up on watching this garbage 35 minutes into the 88 minute runtime. And trust me, I have zero intention of ever returning to attempt finish watching the movie.
The best thing about "Yakuza Girl", aside from when you turn it off, was the movie's cover. The cover oversold the movie by a landslide, and made it look way more interesting than what the movie actually turned out to be.
My rating of writer and director Louis DeStefano's 2024 movie "Yakuza Girl" lands on a generous one out of ten stars.
