Rating: **
Review Date: 2/23/19
Cast: Reiko Oshida
Rika Kageyama (Reiko Oshida) once again gets out of reform school and finds herself in Tokyo looking for a job. After quitting a job at a toy factory due to a sleazy boss, she ends up working with a group of street vendors led by a tough female benefactor. As fate would have it, Rika's former partners in crime all end up in the same place, and after some Yakuza thugs make a mess of things, they team up to take revenge. Donning identical bell bottom jeans, silk shirts, and red trench coats, the determined girls storm the bad guy's nightclub and put them all to the sword. Interestingly, none of the girls get arrested this time, which is unusual for the genre.
This is the second film in the "Delinquent Girl Boss" series, and if nothing else, these films are reliably predictable and never stray from the established formula. Reiko Oshida is stunning in her tight jeans, baseball jersey, super-wide belt, and platform boots. She looks like a character right out of "Gatchaman" (1972). The woman who plays Rika's benefactor is wonderful and her comedic delivery is fantastic. The continuity is a bit confusing as it's more or less a remake of the first film, but the characters already know each other so it's also a loose sequel. This seems pretty common in Japanese cinema. While it's a well-made film, the pacing is sluggish and the lighthearted goofiness is tedious. Only in the final ten minutes do things get serious as the girls go on the attack, which is prefaced by a strange gum-chewing ritual. Reiko delivers some good hits here and there, but overall the bloodless climax is dull and disappointing.