The Yakuza

Set primarily in contemporary Japan, The Yakuza casts Robert Mitchum as Harry Kilmer – an ex-G.I. and all-around tough guy who heads to the land of the rising sun after an old friend’s daughter is kidnapped by a ruthless mob boss. Harry consequently enlists the help of a former Yakuza member (Takakura Ken), and even finds time to track down an old lover (Keiko Kishi) and her daughter (Christina Kokubo). As talky and deliberately-paced as one might’ve expected from filmmaker Sydney Pollack, The Yakuza is generally an effective, if somewhat overlong, little thriller that undoubtedly benefits from Mitchum’s effortlessly cool and thoroughly compelling performance. Much of the movie’s opening hour is devoted to long, dialogue-heavy sequences in which the characters contemplate the various cultural differences between them; it’s sporadically interesting stuff that admittedly isn’t quite as fascinating as screenwriters Paul Schrader and Robert Towne clearly believe it to be. That said, the film does improve considerably as it slowly-but-surely morphs into a flat-out revenge story – culminating with a genuinely thrilling finale that finds Mitchum and Ken descending upon a Yakuza stronghold, where they must battle almost two dozen soldiers (Mitchum, armed with a shotgun and a pistol, is particularly bad-ass here).

**1/2 out of ****