Review of Yakuza: Like a Dragon (2007) by Camille L — 17 Feb 2012

When done correctly, Takashi Miike can give a truly enjoyable movie experience like 13 Assassins. Unfortunately this isn't one of those movies and is a mess of a movie.

Like A Dragon is about a former Yakuza underling Kiryu Kazuma, who has recently been released from prison, who's trying to find Haruka mother. The story of Like A Dragon is very poorly done despite the great material from the video game they could have worked on. It has to many characters that serve no purpose for the story and most of it story-lines go nowhere. Occasionally we do get some stupid dialogue and there are some pointless scenes in the movie itself. That's not the only problem as it has a weak build up to a boring climax. Clearly these people missed many opportunities to tell a thrilling stories, to bad they went in this direction.

Now since this movie material is from the great video game franchise Yakuza, I'm surprised the violence is weak. There's not one enjoyable action scene in this movie. The special effects work against the movie as it makes it look very cartoonish. What's worse than that is the actors are really bad. Not one of them give an convincing performance and even some of the more emotional scenes are delivered heartlessly by it cast. What it does right is the attention to detailed they put to make it look exactly like the game and they do a pretty good job.

Like A Dragon will definitely will disappoint fans of the series and it won't gain any new ones because of this movie. It's a missed opportunity to make a great movie from a great series, and that's what's most disappointing about this movie for any fan.