When a Yakuza Captain is kidnapped, his Lieutenant goes looking for him and meets all kinds of folks from different gangs who are more than willing to take him on in a fight.
Written by Keiichiro Murata, directed by Hiroyuki Tsuji, and with action direction by Kôichi Sakamoto, Isolated is an action-packed film that was introduced at the festival as being 90 minutes long with 80 minutes of action sequences and that was pretty much true. The story here is a bit lacking in development and the characters don’t have much of an arc. The film here is basically meant to be an action showcase and the story and characters come second to the action sequences. One of the main appeals of this film are the fights and how Sakamoto paid high attention to details on. Here, the fighters for the different gangs have different martial arts and fighting styles they use that sets them apart and makes for a fun variety of fight scenes. The film being low on story lends itself well to making it all about the fights, all the time. Also noteworthy, the timeline of the film is not in order and the introduction of previous periods of time with hours as guides is something that gets a bit complicated here and can lead to confusion.
The cast here is good for the actors whose faces we can see and decent for those whose faces we cannot. Fighters are often shows with covered or obscured faces, showing little of their acting and focusing on their fighting. The lead cast gets to show their faces, and they are decent actors with lead Yoshiki Yamaguchi showing the most range as he is given the most screen time to allow the viewers to get into his character and for him to shows his acting skills as well as his fighting skills. The other actors whose faces are seen do good as well, even when their parts have limited screen time or number of lines.
The film seems to be currently missing on IMDB and other usual sources, finding the names of those who worked on this is a bit difficult, so please excuse the lack of precise people being brought up. Following the above, the cinematography here works well with the fights, switching between times from color to black and white at times lends to an interesting looking film that makes one wonder why this change between the two and why not keep the film all in the same color grade.
Isolated is a lot of fun but needs to be watched knowing that the timeline is a mess and there isn’t much of a story, but the fights are great and plentiful, violent and bloody, giving action fans plenty to enjoy as long as story is not their main attraction to films like this.