I watched this one (Yakuza Wolf: I Perform Murder) one night and man I don’t remember if I was drinking a little too much or just really tired from not sleeping the night before or something because I feel like I was especially out of it watching this one, and I remember this being the choice that shook out of a lot of hemming and hawing about what I wanted to do that night. (Come to think of it… I think maybe I was specifically trying to stay up a little later before going to bed early? After being very exhausted all day? Or maybe that was a different day…) In any case though, this served that tired purpose very well. I was worried that it was going to turn out fine but not all that engaging, but there’s definitely enough style and pizazz to keep it entertaining and draw the attention throughout. It’s the first in Shout Factory’s first set centered around Sonny Chiba, and here he plays a character who definitely falls a bit far into an edge lord’s idea of a cool dude, but works okay for what the movie is. It does a lot of James Bond type stuff of casual misogyny and scenes where our hero pointedly observes an innocent coming to harm but doesn’t intervene until after it already happens – but it bugs me less than with Bond since he’s not really meant to be a good guy on any level here. And while I don’t remember specifics, again – there’s just a notch or two extra style than there needs to be here in this movie, and I really appreciated that that particular night. It’s cool.