The Yakuza (1975)

The Yakuza (Japanese: ザ・ヤクザ, Hepburn: Za yakuza) is a 1974 neo-noir crime drama film directed and produced by Sydney Pollack and starring Robert Mitchum, Ken Takakura and Brian Keith. The screenplay by Paul Schrader and Robert Towne is from a story by Schrader's brother, Leonard Schrader. The film is about a retired American detective (Mitchum) who returns to Japan after decades away in order to rescue his friend's daughter, kidnapped by the eponymous crime syndicate.

The film was a co-production between Warner Bros. and Japan's Toei Company, and was filmed principally on-location in Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo. It premiered in Japan on December 28, 1974, before going into general release in the United States on March 19, 1975. It received mixed reviews from critics and was a commercial disappointment, though in the ensuing decades it has been praised by filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino.