User Reviews

"Yakuza Hunters: Duel in Hell" is the second movie of the "Yakuza Hunters", but honestly, they should have stopped after the first movie, because this sequel was nowhere near as good or interesting as the first movie.

Continuing the story from part one, just three years later, Asami returns to the town, finding it in trouble with the Yakuza group yet again. This time they are evicting all people in order to build a casino, killing people in order to get the property. And of course Asami have to come in and save the day.

First, let's take a moment and see what happened here with all five fingers that Asami cut off her left hand in part one. Yeah, you guessed it, they are all back and functioning. Apparently Asami have super regenerative powers or the director just completely opted to forget about this fact and hoping none of the viewers picked up on that little detail.

The story in "Yakuza Hunters: Duel in Hell" failed horribly as the director tried to blend in drama and comedy with the action, and the end result was just bad. At one point in the movie, the film started having an old quality print to it and suddenly it stopped and a note popped up on the screen about the director apologizing for the lack of footage. What? That was just such an epic fail attempt at being funny. And the movie focuses a lot of character building, trying to give Asami a personality by introducing a drama element to the movie, which again just failed terribly.

As for the action sequences, well as in part one, they worked out well enough, but there is far less action in "Yakuza Hunters: Duel in Hell" compared to the first movie, and that was a major setback for the movie.

I enjoyed part one, despite it being cheesy and campy, but this sequel is just downright bad. If you have seen part one you are better off without part two. And if you have seen part two first, then definitely backtrack and watch part one because it is far superior.

Not only does "Yakuza Hunters: Duel in Hell" have a worse storyline and lack of entertainment value compared to part one, but it is also 20 minutes shorter in playing time.

"Yakuza Hunters: Duel in Hell" was a bad disappointment.

The town of Sagawa is being taken over by the Shoryu Yakuza to make room for a Casino as the laws of imminent domain don't seem to apply here for casinos which may or may not be called Trump Towers. Asami, who is a Yakuza killer returns to town and opts to take on the Yakuza and their hired killer Akira.

The film is done as an old western grindhouse in regard to plot, music, and effects which included a ridiculous deleted scene. The film had all the bells and whistles of a grindhouse, but lacked cohesiveness. Plenty of blood, killing, and torture. Oh yes Asami can also catch bullets.

No swearing, sex, or nudity.

Asami has fought gangsters before and does some more in this film. She gets taken in by a family, and a good third of the film seems to be the group just waiting around, going to the arcade, chatting while getting drunk, and other mundane activities.

Every so often, some evil doer shows up, and Asami fights them. She dispatches a couple one night, then has to fight Akira. That ends badly for Asami.

More people get hurt after Asami recovers. Asami gets more galvanized.

Will Asami prevail against the gang violence? If she gets that far, will she get revenge versus Akira?

------Scores-------

Cinematography: 6/10 Lots of bad lighting. The spaghetti western camera work (shooting through heat mirages, long shots with narrow focus, filtered shots of the sun, and so on) were so-so and did not add that much.

Sound: 6/10 Incidental music reminiscent of Spaghetti westerns. Spoken word seemed clear enough. Foley was a little exaggerated, but that's common enough in such films.

Acting: 2/10 Bad.

Screenplay: 0/10 Bizarre mix of low level silliness (documenting playing kids' arcade games; women giggling while getting drunk), comedy, cult nonsense, gore fest, and spaghetti western traditions. None of it was very good, and the disparate pieces did not fit together well at all. Incredible cruelty for the sake of amusement was much too common. Catching bullets in the bare hands? Done three times, but should not have been done once.