Cheap Yakuza (Video) (Sydney Pollack) Price

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Customer Reviews of Yakuza

I am obligated to buy this on DVD and on VHS!
I have seen this movie numerous times and NEVER tire of watching it. As someone involved in Japanese Budo and having been to Japan several times, I get lost in the movie each time. Watching Takakura Ken perform the first Iaido kata-Ippon Mae: Mai is excellent. <
>The cast speaks for itself. Premier actors/actresses. I even see Kishi Keiko on shows I watch now on Japanese TV. One of the central and underlying themes is that of "Giri"-translated by Ken as "the burden hardest to bear". I think we in the west have by and large no real sense of that level of indebtedness. And for that I am sorry. The story is well written AND the soundtrack will be availble soon on CD after 30 years!!!!!! I am so very happy. Now all we need to do is cut this movie released in its full length (123 minutes in Japan) with both Japanese and English dialogue and subtitles in DVD, REGION FREE format. What a great day that will be ;-) <
>For those students of Budo, Japanese culture and who want a glimpse into the multi-layered aspects of that culture, I highly recommend it! (The previous was an unpaid endorsement of this title).

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packs a solid punch
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>High-quality action film of the kind that is unlikely to be made now. <
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>After watching this, action films by the likes of Scorsese, Tarantino, De Niro, Pacino et al seem like so much nonsense. <
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>This is a highly moral film. The action is of the kind one sees in a stage play - formalised and largely innocent. <
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>This films contains almost in its entirety the CLASSICAL view of human existence - man is put on earth to carry out certain duties. What are those duties and how does one know what they are? As one character puts it "if you feel it, you have it, otherwise you don't." The implication being that if you don't feel it, you are no more than an unwitting and unconscious participant in life. To exist is to feel the force of your conscience (giri or obligation) in the context of societal interaction. Giri therefore provides not just the outline for your actions but also its motive force. This allows the stage play that is life to work as it should. <
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>What I found highly admirable was the way the Eastern and Western approaches to life are highlighted and distinguished from each other. In the Eastern way, duty or giri, is embedded into the entire fabric of life through a huge number of formal traditions, rules and rituals. An Easterner cannot escape this framework, but evil still finds a way to exert itself - hence the existence of the criminal yakuza, who despite their amorality still abide by a rigid code of honour. The Westerner is free from any formal notion of giri. In the West giri is entirely voluntary - Mitchum is inspired in this film by the honourable behaviour of the Japanese hero, and raises his game accordingly. East or West, heroism is heroism and evil is evil. <
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>After pondering the matter for many years, this film helped me to confirm that me and my mother are Westerners, whilst my father and my sister are Easterners. <
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>In 2005, this film almost seems like an elegy to a moral code that last flourished most fully all over the world in the 19th century. <
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>This film jolted me out of my slumbers. <
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>If any of the above comments has touched a chord in you, I would highly recommend you watch and enjoy this film. <
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>Thank you.

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Powerful, suspenseful and intelligent!
Robert Mitchum was nearly 60 when he played Harry Kilmer, a World War II veteran who returns to Japan after a thirty year absence. His old army buddy George Tanner (played by Brian Keith) wants him to help find his daughter who's been kidnapped. However, he soon finds out that he has to deal with the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia. Ken Takakura helps him out, and their growing friendship despite their many differences is a major them of the movie. Mitchum also runs into a long lost love, which adds a bittersweet element to this well made movie. It's a good action movie, probably the best film of Mitchum's later career. But it's also a very intelligent and insightful film, much better than "Black Rain" or "Rising Sun," the kind that sadly doesn't get made too often anymore.