The Yakuza

The Yakuza follows Harry Kilmer, an American who once served in the occupation forces in Japan and returns there after a long absence at the request of his friend George Tanner. Tanner's daughter has been taken by the yakuza, and Kilmer, a former private investigator familiar with the country and its underworld, sets out to find her. He is helped by Eiko Tanaka, a woman he knew during his earlier time in Japan, and by her brother Ken, and the task proves harder than he expected.

Sydney Pollack directed the film, the fifth of the seventeen he made, following The Way We Were and preceding Three Days of the Condor. Paul Schrader and Robert Towne wrote the screenplay, and Pollack produced with Michael Hamilburg. Robert Mitchum plays Kilmer, with Ken Takakura as Tanaka Ken, Eiji Okada as Tono, Herb Edelman as Wheat, Richard Jordan as Dusty and James Shigeta as Goro. The production was a collaboration between Warner Bros. Pictures and Japan's Toei Company.

The film was released in December 1974 and runs 112 minutes. Made for about 5 million dollars, it returned roughly 2 million worldwide, a poor result against its cost. Audiences rate it respectably: on IMDb it holds 7.2 out of 10 from around 12,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.1 from 229 votes. Critics, at 6.9 from 56 reviews, were somewhat less enthusiastic than viewers.