Big Bad III Review: In ISOLATED, Yoshiyuki Yamaguchi Is An Army Of One In A Yakuza Thriller That’s Loads Of Fun
Stretching back to more than a decade is the Nihon Toitsu franchise – otherwise known as the “Unification Of Japan” saga comprised of dramas, movies and spin-offs set in the Yakuza underworld. The Big Bad Film Fest was graced this year with the opportunity to deliver just one of the entries included in the gangster saga by way of the rights holders over at Rights Cube with Isolated, which, for what it’s worth, stands to put this franchise on the map for many a curious Asian film fan.
It might also certainly get people remembering the name, Hiroyuki Tsuji, who has directed numerous Nihon Toitsu installments, as well as the films dating back to 2022’s The Y-Team and its successor, Himuro Renji, titularly played by Yasukaze Motomiya, who recurs throughout the franchise. For this, we get a story in Isolated that guarantees quite a taste of what the Nihon Toitsu world has to offer, topped off with a load of kinetic action seqeunces by way of Koichi Sakamoto who has made a killing for himself in his home region following a notable career bringing Ameritoku to the table, and then some.
Nihon Toitsu franchise scribe Keiichiro Murata pens Isolated, which brings fellow cohort, actor Yoshiyuki Yamaguchi front and center for the key role of Yuto Tamura, Lieutenant of the Kyowa Group to which Himuro serves as Captain. Mystery unfolds as Himuro is suddenly kidnapped and taken to an abandoned factory following the death of a businessman with ties to the criminal underworld.
Tamura, eager to piece together this troubling puzzle, sets out to find Himuro with the help of a lackey (Ryo Tajima) who was surreptitiously hired for a job by the same organization responsible for the disappearance of the aforementioned businessman. What follows is a breakneck fight for survival in which Tamura, in his quest to find Himuro alive, is locked into a gauntlet brimming with hooded delinquents and singular foes skilled in various fighting arts, and forced to fend them off while surveilled by an unknown gangster with designs on destroying Kyowa group and ruling the underworld at large.
Isolated converges past and present events for its 138-minute duration, spending most of its current timeline in black-and-white with flashbacks in color. I’m not certain if the choice there was creative or preventive in terms of toning down the violence; the action scenes do get gory on plenty of occasion, although not to the extent to where Miramax modulated 2003’s Kill Bill: Vol. 1 to make the splatter-loaded House Of Blue Leaves fight scene suitable to American audiences at the time. For Isolated, it feels like monochrome flashbacks would have been more conducive, so perhaps this was more of a creative decision they went with.
The good news is that it doesn’t necessarily hurt the film in its delivery. There’s a steady-enough balance between the flashbacks and the time stamps they’re marked by, and overall story that you can get a good sense of what’s happening as it unfolds, and you’re not left too bewildered about what’s happening and when. The only real concern thereafter is how good the action is, and boy oh boy, do Tsuji and co. know how to treat their target audience or what?
Yamaguchi is an absolute beasr to watch in the role of Tamura, with Motomiya rightly earning his place as a protagonistic fave for the immediate viewing of Western audiences; Both actors can be seen in Kensuke Sonomura’s 2023 actioner, Bad City, in which Yamaguchi gets to showcase his puglistic range opposite screen veteran Hitoshi Ozawa. In Isolated, Yamaguchi gets to pull out all stops for much of the film’s fight-heavy runtime, and we’re talking near wall-to-wall action – something close to what Sakamoto has proffered in the past with films like 2002’s Extreme Heist and 2008’s Broken Path. A few of the sequences will also introduce recurring Nihon Toitsu franchise co-star Kenta Kawasaki, who plays Himuro’s right-hand man, Yamamura, in some impressive moments of his own.
Isolated counts up to as many as roughly twenty-five action and stunt sequences, all spaced-out enough to allow the viewer to breathe and for the story to be told accordingly. For the set pieces, you get the requisite gangbuster moments with Yamaguchi in fine form as he takes on all comers. Opponents of choice include a wushu stylist, a kickboxer with a clear penchant for Van Damme movies, an MMA grappler, a capoeirista, and a massive, hulking white dude with a made-up face and a temper for days known only as “the monster”. Even the foley work done on these action scenes, while overaccentuated, still lend to the film’s feast of engaging, fight-filled spectacle.
Isolated does render some more in terms of the overall backdrop of the millieu the story is set in which does clue us in a little more on just who Himuro and Tamura are, and the incumbent world we’re introduced to. To this, there’s an intriguing addendum to the narrative in that the yakuza protagonists, while very much set in the criminal underworld, are moreso treated as the positive purveyors who – in these instances – are seen as heroes to some, even by an adorable young boy whose life is saved earlier in the movie.
I can’t say for certain if the rest of the Nihon Toitsu saga will have its day here in the states, but Isolated is a fair and feasible introduction to the universe. It’s a gritty, fascinating and fun yakuza thriller puncuated by action scenes from one of the best action directors of our time, and with enough swords, sticks, explosions and blows to the head to guarantee a good time.
Isolated enjoyed its World Premiere at the third edition of the Big Bad Film Fest on Sunday evening, August 24.
