In what is hands down the worst movie of the entire series, even worst than the watchable but nothing else fourth movie. The positives of this 7th installment of the franchise are few and far between, namely the talent of the director who could indeed do a pretty good job in terms of camerawork, the always pleasing and beautiful persona of Junko Fuji and the fact that there's still some gambling involved, meaning the series title is respected more than in the 4th movie. For the rest, the story is simply a badly done rehash of the 4th and 5th (or 6th, I personally watched it as the 6th in the saga) movies with the pretense of doing a bashing of nationalist militarism and it's not particularly convincing (crops are more useful for military campaigns than steel is, apparently...no nationalist militarism involved, I guess?), the fights are not as well coreographed as the previous movies (the atrocious ending fight with a tired beyond belief Junko Fuji stealing the show in that regards) and for whatever reason the titular character passes most of her time killing or fighting people without any resonance whatsoever. As the cherry on the cake, the more grounded feeling of all the previous movies (fourth included) is thrown away for comic-book style storytelling that I, a comic book lover, not only finds not well suited for this type of movies but it poses serious questions on the logic of previous movies, in particular all the thing about Oryu being able so easily to get in touch with THE FRIGGING SECRETARY OF THE MINISTRY OF DEFENSE like it's nothing. It retroactively makes all the stuff concerning the police helding one of the two lovers against his will in the third movie and the efforts of the Oryu businesswoman in the fourth one completely pointless, since she could get so easily in touch with the higher rankings in the government thanks to the connection she has with her Yakuza brother-in-law (why is this incredibly annoying and unfunny guy still here anyway?). Really, this movie reeks of jumping the shark from a mile, and my expectations for the last movie in the saga, as of now, are not particularly high. Really disappointing considering the 6th movie I watched was leaps and bounds the best of the entire series.
