Gonin sâga

One of the best and most overlooked Yakuza movies in recent years.

Has a pretty slow but needed 1st act in order to recap the events from the original movie and get the viewer to know the main characters and their motivations. I guess this is where the theatrical's version suffered most of the cuts.

It brings back the same old formula of these movies in a very interesting revenge story packed with a lot of action and drama. Some of the characters from the original are surprisingly back also. This is more fun to watch compared to the very disturbing tone of the original, but some of that stuff is still here. It's still very violent and I loved the blood made of red smoke filling the screen in some shotting scenes. There's a lot of raining which always makes any scene more dramatic, even on one of the posters it is raining.

The heist made me feel so anxious but it's in the final climax where this movie shines. It's my favourite of these movies with an awesome singing scene with Anna Tsuchiya just before the face-off between the 'good' and bad guys. There's even that classic asmr with The Last Waltz played by Morita Doji (R.I.P.).

This movie is related to the first one, made in 1995, and which talked about a bunch of gangsters pulling an armed robbery against a loan shark office, before being chased by the mob hitmen. A gritty and blood thirsty crime flick. Here, the same bunch except it is question of the sons of the first, the original crew. Nearly the same scheme, with another very unexpected hitman to chase the gangsters. I would say I prefer the original feature, though this one is far from being uninteresting. Bloody climax, as was the 1995 flick.