Stumbles in ways the first two didn't, and so easily is my least favourite entry in this series so far... but that being said, it's still pretty good.
While the Yazuza Papers films are often hard to follow, at least with the first two I understood the different sides of the conflicts, and could identify a handful of important individuals. This one really expands things and has far more names to remember. As far as I can tell, it also has more factions, and also more areas to keep track of, as geographically, things also feel like they expand.
I struggled to keep up, but it may be because I watched an unfortunately edited version? It was an offical bluray release, but it ran at about 102 minutes instead of the nearly two-hour runtime listed here. Perhaps the extra 15-ish minutes would make things more clear, if you happen to find the longer version.
I still liked the film's style of course, as well as the handheld camerawork and the crazy bursts of violence. The intrigue I could understand was neat, and I stayed engaged by wondering about whether the protagonist was actually in control of what he was doing, or just pretending he was and consistently panicking internally at the insanity around him.
It ends well too, and in a way that got me excited to see parts 4 and 5, so despite this being a slight misstep, hopefully the rest of the series is onward, upward, and unedited!
