Yakuza Princess review – stylish gangster tale makes its kills count

Story of a yakuza turf war survivor smuggled to Brazil has real style and a devil-may-care cheek

Jonathan Rhys Meyers has turned up in some rum old places of late. He gave one of his best performances as a Gestapo officer in the Norwegian drama The 12th Man, largely overlooked in early 2019. Now the roaming Irishman can be seen playing second blade to the singer-actress Masumi in a thriller set among Sao Paolo's Japanese community, the most populous of its kind outside Japan.

Vicente Amorim's film is fundamentally an exercise in shifting fistfuls of tropes - and cliches: beardy senseis, terse men named Takeshi, ambient Christopher Doyle lighting - halfway around the globe for the heck of it. Reheated 10,000 miles from source, these ingredients are presented medium-fresh. Like street-cart fusion cuisine, this film will fill a hole, if you have a particular hankering.