The Yakuza Details

The Yakuza

The brilliance of this film lies in its understated commitment to the distortion at the heart of the Wests romance with the cinematic violence of the East. The camera's loving flow across the tattoos of the Yakuza gangsters is sharply contrasted with the ugly reality of what those tattoos mean. The young American wannabee gangster cutting his hand whilst inspecting a Samuurai sword has as its clever counterpart a war time Yank 's forbidden love affair with a Japanses woman. The idea of honour prevalent in so many Hong Kong and Japanese gangster films is here subtley explored as honour seems to cut across every relationship. Instead of strengthening social structure the code of honour here often appears out dated and constantly threatens to destroy all that the tradition fixated protagonists hold dear.

The acting is exemplary in all respects. Mitchum especially shines as the weary, life disappointed hard man. Essentially masculine in theme the film's women serve to test and prove the males. The violence when it comes is disturbing and believable. Swirling clouds of blood have never seemed so beautiful and yet, as befits such a thought provoking and emotionally accurate film, so sad.