Actor Cary Tagawa‘s career is something he wholly welcomes as distinctively unusual. His latest role in Yegor Baranov‘s international Yakuza crime thriller, Priest: Confessions Of A Samurai is finally on par for a November opening in Russia, and for a film production relatively marred by the language barriers that followed, it’s a film that undoubtedly benefits Tagawa in just the way he prefers.
The story’s protagonist Takuro Nakamura, baptized as father Nikolai, is the priest of the Japanese Orthodox Church who used to be a professional sportsman and now is the blood brother of one of the influential clans yakuza. Once he could not pass by the violence and helped an ordinary girl getting to grips with one of the groups hostile to his brother. The war of yakuza clans is imminent. Having become the hostage of the criminal skirmish the priest faces a lethal risk. Nakamura is sent to preach to little Russian village Glubokoye which is torn apart by its own conflicts.
Principal photography took place between June and August of 2013 – such is the current state of most of the film industry as some releases take perpetually longer. At any rate the film has a trailer now running on line. Check it out just below, and feel free to read more about it at Russia: Beyond The Headlines.
H/T: Twitchfilm