“Reklaw” is a 12-minute short by Polaris Banks, starring Lance Henriksen playing somewhat against type as the pacifist ringleader of a group of talented vigilantes who drive around trying to keep people out of jail by destroying evidence before the police arrive. We learn this through watching one specific case where they attempt to save a woman from the law only for violence to rear its head. The film moves well, with an interesting structure and a few clever ideas, and there’s a good mix of men-at-work humour with serious commentary on society. But the backstory’s opaque, and probably could have used more room to breathe. There’s an interesting idea here, which could make a feature film or a TV show (and indeed Banks has said the short’s a proof of concept), but is probably not displayed at its best in a single 12-minute short.
Bundled with the short was Yakuza Princess. It’s a Brazilian film, from director Vicente Amorim, who co-wrote with Kimi Lee, Tubaldini Shelling, and Fernando Toste. They were working from a graphic novel called Samurai Shiro, by Danilo Bayreuth, which I have not read. It’s an action movie based in the Japanese community of Sao Paolo, Brazil.
20 years ago there was a massacre of a Yakuza clan in Japan. Today, Akemi (Masumi) is a young woman in Sao Paulo’s large Japanese community who has grown up studying swordplay but unaware of certain key truths about her family. Elsewhere in the city, a young man (Johnathan Rhys-Meyers) with amnesia, nasty battle-scars, and a katana wakes up in a hospital. The film proceeds to bring these things together, with a healthy dose of gunplay and swordfighting.
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