Review | Netflix movie review: Bad Lands – Sakura Ando shines in Japanese crime drama that recalls Hirokazu Koreeda’s Shoplifters but turns to trite thrills
- Starring Sakura Ando, Bad Lands begins as an engaging social commentary about Japan’s growing underclass, reminiscent of Hirokazu Koreeda’s film Shoplifters
- The film turns into a genre crime thriller, making this drama co-starring Ryosuke Yamada, about yakuza-led phone scammers, frustratingly superficial
3/5 stars
Sakura Ando stars as a small-time grifter who gets in way over her head in Bad Lands, a Japanese crime drama that attempts to shine a light on the country’s predatory phone scamming industry.
Directed by industry veteran Masato Harada, who enjoyed a return to form with last year’s Hell Dogs, the film wastes no time in plunging its audience into this labyrinthine world, where yakuza thugs oversee a sprawling multi-tiered workforce of chancers, outsiders and ne’er-do-wells all desperate to make ends meet.
We first meet Neri (Ando) tailing a potential target through the bustling streets of Osaka, but before the flustered housewife can surrender her life savings, Neri senses a police presence and walks away from the hand-off. Returning home, she learns that her wayward stepbrother “Crazy Jo” (Ryosuke Yamada) is out of prison and back in town.
Within hours of his return, Jo has gambled his way into an impossible debt with the steely blond loan shark Hayashida (SaringRock), who tasks him with carrying out an assassination to pay off his debt.
Inevitably, things go wrong, and Neri and Jo find themselves in possession of an ill-gotten fortune, prompting every gangster in town to come gunning for them.
Bad Lands opens with lofty ambitions to transcend the crime genre and engage in bold social commentary about Japan’s ballooning underclass.
Neri is embedded in a slum-like community populated by elderly, educated, decent folk including Yasumasa Obu’s “Professor” and Ryudo Uzaki’s reformed yakuza member Mandala, who have fallen on hard times and are now employed as expendable foot-soldiers and go-betweens by Namase Katsuhisa’s merciless criminal enterprise.
After a fastidiously documented opening act, however, these aspirations are largely swept aside as the demands of a more traditional thriller take hold. What follows is pacy and engaging in its own right, but feels like a derivative backslide after the film’s promising opening.
Ando is as exemplary as ever, even when Harada’s script hints at myriad untreated emotional scars, not least Neri’s traumatic past with Yasushi Fuchikami’s misogynistic tech bro Goya, which the film never finds time to fully address.
As a result, Bad Lands proves a frustratingly superficial experience, content to have its eye-catching cast pay lip service to hot button social issues, without investing fully in anything more than boilerplate thrills.
Bad Lands is streaming on Netflix.
