Three years before his
underrated revenge masterpiece Rolling Thunder, Paul Schrader, along
with Robert Towne wrote a screenplay based on a story by Schrader's
brother Leonard who also wrote a crazy looking Japanese film called
The Man Who Stole The Sun and was apparently an expert of Japanese
culture. The film mixed 40s film noir, 70s action and Japanese crime
cinema into a plot that follows a former private eye, hired by a
friend to go to Japan to find and rescue his daughter who is being
held hostage by the Yakuza because the father made a deal to buy guns
but took the money and didn't provide the product.
Harry Kilmer (Robert
Mitchum), hero of the film, has a great knowledge of Japan as he was
stationed there during and after WW2, so Harry along with his new
sidekick, the young Dusty (Richard Jordan), arrive in Tokyo where
Harry's old friend greets them and takes them back to his place.
Harry sets out to locate the missing girl but needs the help of a
former Yakuza who has turned away from the life called Tanaka Ken,
Ken is the brother of the woman who Harry fell in love with all those
years ago. Harry manages to persuade Ken to take up his sword once
again and after Ken kills a couple of men when they go looking for
the girl, he finds that he has a price on his head so Harry decides
to help him clear his name by basically killing as many Yakuza as
possible to get to the man who put the hit out on Ken.
There's more in the
plot but it would contain a lot of spoilers. There's a definite hard
boiled feel to The Yakuza, it feels like a film that could have been
made in the late 40s, early 50s coupled with the kind of Yakuza films
the director Kinji Fukusaku was making during the 70s like Graveyard
Of Honour and Street Mobster, but shot through the eye of Sydney
Pollock during his best decade. The look of the film is fantastic, it
has this 70s look with the Pichinko palaces and night clubs but also
the look of classic Japan, paper houses, bamboo and sliding doors
which adds a lot of authenticity to the film.
What makes The Yakuza
so bad ass?
Robert Mitchum is the
answer to that question. Mitchum brings an old school swagger to the
role of Harry Kilmer, the man has seen some shit go down in his life,
he's a former hard ass, ex-private eye, ex-military police officer
and dab hand at shooting someone in the face, who when we meet him is
checking on his flowers while dressed in a dressing gown. Kilmer has
retired, he's living a normal life but his friend needs him. Kilmer
doesn't hesitate in picking up his guns for one last showdown and
even though Mitchum was getting on he could still out cool the best
of them. While doing a bit of research on the film I found out that
Mitchum wasn't the first choice for the role of Kilmer, Lee Marvin
was originally attached to star with his Dirty Dozen director Robert
Aldrich attached to direct but when Mitchum came on board he forced
out Aldrich and Pollack stepped in. Lee Marvin is cool as fuck but
he's cool in the same way Clint Eastwood is cool, there's more of an
intensity to their persona's where as Mitchum has this awesome laid
back swagger which suited the world wary Kilmer, I would have liked
to have seen what Marvin brought to the character but Mitchum does a
pretty fucking cool job.
Then there's the
character of Tanaka Ken played brilliantly by Takakura Ken (Black
Rain) his almost obedient nature and the code that he lives by makes
his badass by default, infact most anti-hero characters who live by a
code are usually badass by default, and he's a master swordsman with
his Katana and his massive Yakuza tattoo on his back.
A badass film should
consist of five things, a cool main hero, some stylish
action/violence, a kick ass soundtrack or score, here by Dave Grusin,
a cool setting and a good script. The Yakuza is stylish but also
gritty at the same time, you can relate to the characters and invest
in their journey and The Yakuza accomplishes this in spades. I would
just like to point out that if you are looking for a fast paced
action film, The Yakuza may not be the film for you, if you are
looking for a solid slowburn, action film with emphasis more on plot
and character, then The Yakuza is just up your street. Because of all
the elements present in The Yakuza, it makes the Bad Ass Alphabet for
the letter Y.
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