6 hours ago
This is a classic femme fatale icon of the yakuza film genre. Red Peony Oryx is the daughter of a yakuza boss that is killed, so she walks the road of vengeance. It's got style, like many of the chanbara films of the late 60s early 70s - cool, classy, stoic, with oafish villains and somewhat stilted choreography and scenes that were probably shocking in the day. In this one, there's a close up of a yakuza man cutting off his finger, obviously a prop finger, but well actualized for that era. Ultimately it all hinges on Red Peony, Junk Fuji, a timeless beauty that exemplifies elegance. She has a red peony tattoo across her shoulder, yakuza style, and wields a flute that conceals a dagger and hairpins (because all female martial artists wield hairpins). The film is a tad weighed down by the content repetition of the fact that women aren't permitted to live the yakuza life, but Red Peony does anyway in an unapologetic way. What works really well is that Red Peony never stoops to wanton sexiness. There's constant blather about her beauty from the male characters, but she remains poised throughout.
This film launched a 7 film franchise. The next two installments are available on Hoopla, which is where I watched this. I may watch another. This is my first taste of the franchise, something I've been meaning to check out for years.
However I was having some issues with the sound, which kept coming off track just enough to get really confusing with the timing of the subtitles. It may be my AppleTV which is making a new clicking noise across platforms - sometimes the sound drops out completely and must be restored with a reboot.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse