Director: Mio Ezaki
Notable Cast: Tetsuya
Watari, Chieko Matsubara, Koji Wada, Miroshi Nawa, Isao Tamagawa, Eiji Go,
Ryoji Hayama, Fumio Watanabe, Kaku Takashina, Asao Uchida
The initial worries that plagued my expectations for the
third Outlaw film, Heartless, is that it the franchise
would have already found and adhered to a very specific formula established by
the first one. The second film already suffered a bit from trying to recreate
the formula which undermined a lot of its greater elements and it wasn’t a huge
leap of imagination to see this six film series already hitting a rut of
expressive style. Fortunately, Heartless
does not necessary stick to the blue print pointers of the franchise like the previous
entry did. You will certainly see some familiar themes and even structures, a
smart move overall that comes with formulating a franchise. However, it’s also
a film that can be weirdly confusing because it’s supposed to be a prequel (I
think) to the original film with no reference to the previous two films. Without
this knowledge prior to going into the film (information about the film seems
relatively sparse on the internet even in 2016) Heartless is a bit rocky at first, but the film is ultimately an
entertaining and effective little action thriller.