The Yakuza (1974) on Netflix
Retired detective Harry Kilmer returns to Japan after decades away. An old friend, George Tanner, asks him to rescue Louise, Tanner's daughter, kidnapped by the yakuza gangster Tono.
- Netflix2.9/5
- IMDb7.2/1011,832 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes60%
Trailer
Plot summary
During the post-war occupation, Harry Kilmer served as a Marine MP in Tokyo. There he met Eiko, who worked the black market to buy penicillin for her sick daughter, and he saved her life. They lived together, and he asked her to marry him more than once. When her brother Ken came home from the war, he went into the yakuza and refused to see his sister, and Eiko broke off contact with Kilmer. Before leaving Japan, Kilmer bought her a bar with money borrowed from his friend George Tanner. Years later, Tanner is doing business with the gangster Tono, who has seized Tanner's daughter Louise as leverage in a gun deal. Tanner believes the debt of giri Ken owes Kilmer will make Ken help, and Kilmer flies to Tokyo with Tanner's bodyguard, Dusty.
Cast
- Lee Chirilloas Louise
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Yakuza (1974)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The idea came from a letter Paul Schrader received from his brother Leonard, who had left the US when his military draft induction card arrived and found work teaching English at a Japanese university. With radical students shutting the campus down, he ended up spending a lot of time in yakuza-run bars.
- Schrader was fired from the rewrites because he could not write the "softening" of the Harry character that Pollack wanted, saying the two did not get along and that Pollack needed someone of his own age whose work he respected. Robert Towne came on to rewrite the film for $150,000.
- Lee Marvin was wanted for the lead, and Aldrich thought his own view might have prevailed if Marvin had been cast, but Marvin disagreed with Warner Brothers over the size of his fee and Robert Mitchum was cast instead.
- Robert Redford was interested in the part as well, but he then decided that he was not old enough for it.
