Takashi Miike's Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo has arrived as the first entry in what's being pitched as a run of international sequels to the franchise Abel Ferrara started with Harvey Keitel in 1992. The Hollywood Reporter's review, published Thursday, isn't kind. It calls the film "semi-coherent at best" and, more damning for a Miike joint, short on the electricity that made his name.

That's the real surprise here. Miike built his reputation on Audition and Ichi the Killer, films that turned violence into something close to opera. THR's review says Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo aims for hardboiled crime thriller territory instead and mostly just sits there, though it credits the film with a couple of amped-up set pieces and Miike's usual streak of dark humour.

Shun Oguri plays Yabuki, a Tokyo cop investigating the yakuza underworld who's less interested in redemption than in feeding a meth habit, playing ping pong, and dodging loan sharks. Where Keitel and Nicolas Cage's versions of this character had drug-fuelled spiritual reckonings, per THR's telling, Yabuki barely registers guilt over a partner's death fifteen years back except in dream sequences. His wife leaves him with the kids. He shrugs it off.

The plot, such as it is, splits into two threads. One follows a body count linked to a vengeful ex-yakuza soldier, Ishizuka, played by Shotaro Mamiya, whose murder methods include feeding his wife's remains to crows. The other brings in Lily James as FBI agent Gwen Birgssen, sent to Tokyo to find a missing congressman's daughter, played by WWE wrestler Liv Morgan, who's gone off the rails on drugs and tattooed men.

Here's where the review turns sharpest. THR says James is badly miscast, saddled with a Southern accent that lands somewhere between unconvincing and unintentionally funny, and that her chemistry scenes with Oguri get lost between his shaky English and a muddy sound mix. The two leads eventually sleep together after a nightclub brawl that, by the review's account, does nothing for the plot.

The two investigations converge eventually, tying in a yakuza father played by Jun Kunimura, recognisable to Kill Bill fans as Boss Tanaka, who offers Yabuki a debt-clearing deal. THR calls the climax busy rather than satisfying, though it singles out one late chase sequence, Yabuki mowing down gangsters while protecting a group of kids, as vintage Miike chaos.

What happens to the rest of this planned sequel run is anyone's guess right now. No cities, casts, or dates have surfaced beyond this Tokyo opener. If Bad Lieutenant is really going global, the franchise will need a stronger outing than this one to convince anyone it's worth the trip.