"The Yakuza" (1974) - Movie Review

I got educated that Robert Mitchum is the life line of film-noir when I read about the film “The Yakuza”. He is apathetic and hardly sweats expression of some kind. Whether it is a style aptly in place for this film is one question. Or whether the culture and the code the Japanese tradition dictates anesthetize the characters is another question though. Either way “The Yakuza” is good but the placidity of it is little bit too long for me to love it despite a violent climax shot with affection for the martial art and the adrenaline.

We are told that the “Yakuza” are the gangsters or clan having originated as old as Samurai code of bushido and in fact is followed with rigorous devotion as that of it. For those who are not aware, I adore and get fascinated by the code of Samurai. For a person not believing in religion or particular rule book, this is a contrast. Samurai code does the acts with an acceptance so pure and clean that it makes the insane ritual bliss of art. It is not driven by rage, money or carnal pleasures but an honour as I would rarely use that term becomes the surviving factor. My thoughts are reflected through the character of Dusty (Richard Jordan) an American body guard getting attracted by the code and the lovely face of Hanako (Christina Kokubo) but not quite able to understand or attach much reason to it.

“The Yakuza” plays like a stage drama and decorates the back drop with Japan and this group of men who are strange soldiers having a principle in an illegitimate business. Harry played by Mitchum knows about this culture and has a failed love out there in the deeps for twenty years. He knows about the pattern of the men because he was an enemy and a grateful person for Tanaka Ken (Ken Takakura), the brother of Eiko (Keiko Kishi) whom Harry rescued. The complex perspective of Ken being grateful and has an enmity because he is an American in war time makes him to order Eiko to stay away from him but promises an obligation to Harry for life time. Harry’s friend George Tanner (Brian Keith) is in trouble with another Yakuza Tono (Eiji Okada) for which Harry along with Tanner’s body guard Dusty goes to Japan to ask Ken’s help.

Harry, Ken and Eiko are caught up in this whirl wind of tradition and giri which means debt for Harry while Ken says it as a burden. But Harry tells “debt” and explains in it such that he understands the behaviour and also ridiculed by the force of it. Ken saying it as “burden” in negative expression actually gives an optimist feeling of how repaying it is the only way for unloading it. In these two answers Dusty draws one conclusion is that one can take the word of a Yakuza even if it is a nemesis swearing to kill you.

The phlegmatic nature of Mitchum is the pathway to an otherwise cold proceeding for a noir styled film. But learning about the history of the three people and an unexpected suspense revealed, that would break down any one who has been terribly hurt and waited so much. Director Sydney Pollack with screenplay by Paul Schrader (later went on to write “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull”), Leonard Schrader and Robert Towne want that character to be a man of few muscle movement over his face and terse words addressing the job and problems in hand than talking it out in sentences. This in staying true to the personality is a stretch and made it indifferent for me.

In spite of the vague flow, “The Yakuza” has a passion for this tradition and equally perplexed by it. In trying to understand and find reasons for this culture, they are come to be aware of its endless ocean of ambiguity in a principles of serene, lethal and immaculate conduct. And it directly is screened in the movie through characters in balance and truthful to what they are in achieving their goal of living true to themselves.