Red Peony Gambler remains my favorite yakuza film-not only for the incomparable joy of seeing Junko Fuji and Ken Takakura at their prime, but also for Tai Kato's assured expressionism.-Paul SchraderThe wandering female gambler Oryu (Junko Fuji), with her red peony tattoo, is stranger to all but no stranger to love, mysterious and generous by turns. Deft of sword and dagger, in her snow-white kimono it seems no one could impersonate her, but someone tries in the third of the popular eight-film Red Peony series. The imposter, the hapless mother of a blind girl Oryu has rescued, becomes the sacrificial figure in a complicated Romeo and Juliet plot amid rival yakuza gangs. The obligations, betrayals, and moral imperatives of the yakuza formula are given a feminine interpretation in Oryu, with no loss of edge. This film is a tour de force of Kato's cinematic poetry, from the striking opening montage, to the fractured intimacy of the hanafuda card game, to the Leone-esque framing of the outdoor sequences that makes Nagoya in the late nineteenth century look like the wild West. (JB)