Shin jingi naki tatakai

This is not a very exciting film. It is about two schoolfriends who grow apart, with one becoming a yakuza and another a business man. When the leader of the crime family dies a succession war ensues and both men meet each other again. There's too much focus on the internal battles in the yakuza clan, with the usual ridiculous amount of characters and sub-plots, to make the film really work as a drama about the relationship between the two men and the yakuza spend to much time negotiating instead of killing each other to make the film work as a yakuza film. This was probably an attempt at making a film that works at both levels, like Martin Scorcese can do, but it fails at both, although there are some good scenes.

Shin Jingi Naki Tatakai may be a little slow and lacking in action for most, but what it misses in this area is made up by the stylish combination of the soundtrack and cinematography that you don't find in the typical Japanese Yakuza movies. Director Junji Sakamoto uses the music to add directly to the scenes, much like Quentin Tarrantino (and keep an eye out for the scene that inspired the slow-motion walk of Lucy Liu and her cronies near the end of Kill Bill), to great effect. Unfortunately this is only done in a few scenes. The movie is ostensibly a story about two childhood friends who end up taking different paths in life - one becomes a Yakuza, and another a businessman who despises Yakuza and all they stand for. However, there is little interaction or connection between the two until almost the end of the movie, as if them growing up together was little more than a footnote. A better than average Yakuza movie, although slower than many. Not the best Yakuza film out there by any means, but worth a look for the few stylized scenes that interplay perfectly with the soundtrack.