Yakuza Goddess: Lust and Honor/Comments

• Young monk gets into trouble and later turns into a lonely yakuza. Tatsumi Kumashiro’s pink coloured crime drama has an unusually long running time, 84 minutes. It exceeds the typical roman porno length by nearly 15 minutes. As funny as it sounds, such amount of extra minutes on a Nikkatsu feature is almost always a sign of a director’s ambition on the storytelling front. That is the case here, too. Although the film suffers from some pink diseases, the plot is rather decent and interesting especially in the end. Some dead moments and unengaging scenes have slipped into the first half, though. The pay off however comes in form of an excellent and satisfying finale. The also film surprises with the level of stylized brutality; some scenes are quite bloody even by yakuza film standards. --HungFist