Kinichi (Eiji Okuda) is an uncouth and brash yakuza soldier who is growing tired of slogging through the gangster life. While on a stakeout to make a hit on a rival boss in Tokyo, Kinichi becomes enamored with a shy, bumpkin in the city waitress, Yoko (Yuno Natsuo). While he is wining and dining her, which also involves slipping her a mickey, the hit is a failure. Kinichi turns tail and takes a drugged Yoko back to Oksaka.

Back in Osaka, things within the gang are not going well. The boss is terminally ill. Rivals, lead by boss Uzaki, more than a little peeved about the attempted hit, begin to make headway against Kinichi's gang. Even the gang's second in command, Matsui, betrays them and aligns himself with the competition. After the boss dies, Kinichi tries to do his duty and assassinate their rival, but the hit is botched by Yoko, who has strangely grown to love the scatterbrained yakuza who abducted her. Kinichi and Yoko move to Kinichi's hometown and start up a new life as drug dealers. But the yakuza life wont go quietly into the past, it sticks like a putrescence, and, as a result, Uzaki comes gunning for Kinichi with predictably bleak results.

Essentially, in other hands, A Yakuza in Love would be your standard tale of divided Yakuza loyalty, one mans struggle between honoring his criminal family and trying to seek out a better life with his one true love, something that proves to be impossible within the crime world. However, the comedic tone really makes it a bit of a muddle. Rokuro Mochizuki keeps one injecting moments that defy you to take it seriously, be it as a comedy, a romance, and so forth. For instance, Kinichi's whole seduction involves drugging and kidnaping, then what amounts to a lie (?) by trying to play on Yoko's sympathies by acting like a sad sort who is really in need of her help. Actually, the only reason he doesn't keep her in a perpetually drugged state is because a doctor tells him she has a heart condition that cannot take the strain. It isn't my idea of love, probably not yours either, but for the character of Kinichi, it is his twisted image of love and how to win someone over.

Sympathy is really the key here. The characters are not very sympathetic, but, then again, they rarely are in yakuza flicks. It plays to that all too common Japanese machismo view of relationships, making Yoko fall for Kinichi purely because of his devotion and, albeit obsessive and debauched, attention. (See guys, all you need to do is force yourself on a girl and she'll be yours.) But the real interesting undercurrent is that the two characters share some paternal emptiness that no doubt helps to form their bond. After Kinichi mistreats Yoko, he speaks in a different, trance-induced, voice, that of his mother, and begs Yoko to understand his true feelings that he cannot express. Likewise, at one point Yoko is bawling to Kinichi, unconsciously calling him "Papa." Kinichi's yakuza boss is his own father figure, comically presented in one scene where Kinichi literally crawls into the boss' bed and curls up next to him.

So, it is a strange one. Luckily the performances are all pretty solid. Eiji Okuda plays his role with some lovable energy. Yuno Natsuo does a good job with a pretty carbon copy cute, subservient girl character. And, of course, Rokuro Mochizuki entertains by continually veering the film onto unpredictable, quirky paths.

The DVD: Artsmagic.

Picture: Anamorphic Widescreen. Artsmagic has released a few other Mochizuki films with middling transfers. This film fares a bit better. Technically it is a fair presentation, not overly compressed with some minor edge enhancement, shimmering artefacts, and slightly lacking details. The film wasn't a big production, so there are some slightly soft focus and grainier bits, but otherwise the sharpness and contrast details appear to be in good shape. The print is clean, though the colors are a tad dull with a lean toward sickly yellow hues.

Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 or 5.1 tracks, Japanese language with optional English subtitles. Good mix. Pretty standard. The dialogue gets a slightly more robust treatment in the 5.1 mix, which settles the atmospherics and score into the back and side channels, leaving the center channel more room to carry the word. The score is driven by jaunty guitar, and stick to a trio of drums, upright bass, and guitar.

Extras: Biographies.— Interview with director Rokuro Mochizuki (16:05). Like all the Artsmagic discs of his films, Mochizuki gives a very good casual interview and does a nice job discussing his approach to film making and general anecdotes.— Interview with author and MidnightEye contributor Tom Mes (16:36). Mes discusses the basics about the film. I actually like this a tad better than feature length critical commentary.— "Mochizuki and the Yakuza Film" featurette (8:04). Again, Mes gives a decent summation of the film and how it fits (and stands apart) in the Yakuza genre and Mochizuki's other works.

Conclusion: Very offbeat film. As a comedy, it isn't laugh out loud funny. As a romance, it isn't exactly endearing. And, as a yakuza film, it isn't really stone-faced serious and yet it also isnt a cartoon. But somehow it all works, though in a "like it, not love it" sort of way. The DVD offers a nice enough presentation with some good extras. Worth a rental for most and a casual purchase for Japanese film fans with a lean towards the modern and idiosyncratic.