Overview: While her husband is in prison doing time, Tamaki, the wife of a yakuza capo, runs her spouse’s gang with an iron hand.

Meanwhile, Makoto, her younger sister, marries a member of a rival band after being raped by him. The two sisters, united by blood ties but married to enemy yakuzas, will ultimately have to decide whose side they’re on.

Blu-ray Verdict: Hideo Gosha is one of my all-time favorite chanbara directors, but I’ve seen few of his other films as they haven’t appeared as immediately interesting to me as his sword flicks. Yakuza Ladies doesn’t really make a strong case in either direction, but nonetheless it is remarkably entertaining for the most part.

Ostensibly about the wives of incarcerated yakuza men, keeping the criminal wheels spinning until sentencing has been finished, Yakuza Ladies doesn’t really feel that much different from any other yakuza movie. There’s the usual power struggles and warring between opposing yakuza groups, and such an expansive cast it’s difficult to keep tabs on, even as they get thinned out over the course of the movie. This is your basic ’70s yakuza movie, only with ’80s fashion and hair!

Again, that’s not to say that this is bad for it is a solid, if, for me, slightly unremarkable piece of genre cinema, mostly hampered a bit by some baffling character choices and a runtime that could have benefited from some tightening. Yakuza Ladies apparently spawned fifteen sequels (not by Gosha), though, so it clearly found a target audience that saw something in it that I may be missing. Or maybe it was just all the bare breasts on screen?

Bonus Features:
LIMITED EDITION BOOKLET
LIMITED EDITION INDIVIDUALLY NUMBERED OBI STRIP
TRAILER
ORIGINAL AND NEWLY COMMISSIONED ARTWORK BY SEAN LONGMORE
STILLS GALLERY
ORIGINAL MONO 2.0 AUDIO WITH NEW ENGLISH SUBTITLES
HIGH DEFINITION BLU-RAY PRESENTATION IN 1.85:1 ASPECT RATIO

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