Whatever Masato Harada has been slipping into his morning coffee lately, it seems to be doing the trick. The director’s recent work has been infected with a ferocious dynamism, which offsets the trademark density of his writing.
“Bad Lands” comes fast on the heels of last year’s “Hell Dogs,” a giddily absurd gangster saga that I relished despite its abundant flaws. Adapted from Hiroyuki Kurokawa’s 2015 novel, “Keiso” (“Weeds”), this lowlife thriller is in many ways a companion piece to the earlier film, although Harada seems to be working from classier source material. Although there’s nothing to rival the operatic set pieces of “Hell Dogs,” it’s a better movie overall, with a magnetic lead turn by Sakura Ando.
She plays Neri, a wily con artist who works as part of a phone scam operation in Osaka. Living in the city’s rundown Nishinari district, she maintains a precarious existence: During the film’s taut opening sequence, she and an accomplice narrowly escape a police sting while trying to relieve an elderly woman of her savings.