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The Yakuza
Directed by
Sydney Pollack
R
1974
1h 52m
Action
,
Crime
,
and more
7.2
47%
72%
Add to Watchlist
American private-eye Harry Kilmer returns to Japan to rescue a friend's kidnapped daughter from the clutches of the Yakuza.
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Where to Watch The Yakuza
Amazon Video
Rent $2.99
Buy $9.99
Apple TV
Rent $2.99
Buy $9.99
Fandango At Home
Rent $2.99
Buy $9.99
+2 more
Cast of The Yakuza
Robert Mitchum
Harry Kilmer
Ken Takakura
Tanaka Ken
Eiji Okada
Tono
Herb Edelman
Wheat
Richard Jordan
Dusty
James Shigeta
Goro
Keiko Kishi
Eiko
Christina Kokubo
Hanako
Kyōsuke Machida
Kato
Brian Keith
George Tanner
Eiji Gō
Spider
Lee Chirillo
Louise
M. Hisaka
Boyfriend
William Ross
Tanner's Guard
Akiyama
Tono's Guard
Harada
Goro's Doorman
Sydney Pollack
Director / Producer
Paul Schrader
Writer
Leonard Schrader
Writer
Robert Towne
Writer
The Yakuza Ratings & Reviews
Mister Arn
May 15, 2025
A well-crafted character-directed film that amps up during the action scenes.
Arizona Republic
Phil Strassberg
"The Yakuza" is unusual and confusing fare.
TIME Magazine
Jay Cocks
Serpentine strands... cause a great deal of confusion and hobble the movie just when it should be moving briskly along.
Boston Phoenix
Janet Maslin
It moves slowly, with dignity, stressing ritual at the expense of dynamics.
Newsweek
Paul D. Zimmerman
Imagine The Big Sleep shot in the back alleys of Tokyo and you have something of the muddled mood of The Yakuza, a cultural cross-breed that is neither sushi nor Southern fried chicken.
Village Voice
Andrew Sarris
The Yakuza is slowed down considerably by Pollack's solemnly eclectic direction and the endlessly expository dialogue which tends to make the whole exercise, bloody as it is, more explanatory than exclamatory.
New York Daily News
Rex Reed
It is an enormously complex film that defies description.
Kansas City Star
Dennis Stack
Sydney Pollack... directed "The Yakuza" with as much attention to the tender as the tough.
New York Magazine/Vulture
Judith Crist
It is grim and it is glowing and as off-beat and unpredictable as Pollack has proved himself in the past.
Detroit Free Press
Susan Stark
In this film, Pollack explores something far more interesting than a cultural hybrid. He explores a cinematic hybrid. "The Yakuza" turns out to be a thinking man's action picture.
Chicago Tribune
Gene Siskel
"The Yakuza" offers stylish sword-fighting sequences.
Los Angeles Times
Kevin Thomas
Pollack is a generally good director of actors but lacks the strong auteur personality essential to carrying off so highfalutin a project as this.
Newsday
Joseph Gelmis
When the violence finally comes in several episodes, it's with the ferocity of massacres trying to make up for lost time.
New York Daily News
Jerry Oster
For a gangster picture, "The Yakuza" is splendidly inert.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Joe Pollack
"The Yakuza" turns out to be what one might expect, a convoluted mess in which non-related details are continually mushed together and just as rapidly fall apart.
Slant Magazine
Fernando F. Croce
Mitchum and Takakura Ken forge a moving sense of mutual admiration for each other's honor codes and life-worn experience.
The New Yorker
Pauline Kael
The script is humorless, and Pollack, despite his willingness to make action films, doesn't seem to understand how action-film mechanisms work.
Variety
Variety Staff
The Yakuza is a confused and diffused film which bites off more than it can artfully chew.
New York Times
Lawrence Van Gelder
Its merits as an action film strongly dosed with exotic culture and subculture are offset by obvious flaws.
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
A superior action movie, but all the same, it's for audiences that have grown accustomed over the last few years to buckets of blood, disembowelments and severed hands flying through the air.
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