2 reviews
This is the sequel to Hibotan Bakuto - Hanafuda Shôbu, the very best Yakuza movie ever made. It's not that good, but still it's quite entertaining for fans of the prequel. Oryu searches for the young, blind girl she left alone in Part One, only to find her a thief in Tokyo. She tries to help her, but again she stands between the fronts of a gang war... Much bloodier than the original, this is a good swordfighting adventure, even if the main theme of gambling is quite underrepresented. The great Fuji Junko is back again, and gives an even better performance,but is hampered by stupid dialogue (at least in the subtitled version) and too many repetitions from Part One. But why change a winning horse?
In the third film of the series "Ryuko Yano" (Sumiko Fuji)--also known by her Yakuza title as "Oryu-The Red Peony"--was forced to leave behind a young blind girl and ever since then she has tried to find her again. To that effect, while helping out another young girl she discovers a possible lead and goes to Tokyo to check it out. Sure enough, even though it has been several years, she finds the person she's been looking for just in time to prevent her from being punished for a theft she recently committed. In the process, however, Oryu becomes involved with helping a local theater fight off an attempt by the Yakuza to take it over--and the stakes are extremely high for everyone involved. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this wasn't one of the better additions to this series due to the somewhat similar plot to those films preceding it. Likewise, I didn't especially care for the rather unrealistic fight scene at the end either. On a completely different note, I should mention that there is some confusion as to whether this is the fifth or sixth film in the "Red Peony Gambler" series as some sources list this movie ahead of another one titled "Red Peony Gambler-The Notorious Gambler." The reason for this confusion could stem from the fact that one may have been produced earlier but for some reason was actually released a year later. Be that as it may, since this particular film was produced a year later I have listed it as the sixth film in the series with "Red Peony Gambler-The Notorious Gambler" as the fifth. In that regard, as I mentioned in my review of the previous film, at least it corresponds to the order listed by IMDb.