What's ironic here is that we thought of why we missed Pollack while re-visiting one of his most high profile failures...."The Yakuza" found little favor with critics or audiences. Critics judged its East-Meets-West storyline as dense and impenetrable.....and its violence repulsively over the top. Moviegoers didn't know what to make of it.....a somber, ultimately tragic meditation on the Japanese concept of unbending obligation that occasionally erupted in spectacular blood spurting. What the hell was this movie?
Most movie directors in the mid-70's would have gone literally for the jugular with this material and concentrated on goosing the audience with its violence. After all, you had Japanese gangsters, the Yakuza, going at it with blazing guns and razor sharp samurai swords Throw in a World War II veteran (Robert Mitchum) into the mix, and you've got yourself a real popcorn muncher of a bloodbath....
But not Pollack......when he tackled traditional genres, he well understood all the fireworks audiences expected from thrillers, adventures and westerns. His action sequences were second to none and still hold up against today's CGI artifice. But he wanted more out of these films than the temporary fleeting sensations of seeing people shot, stabbed or blown up.(In today's action films, that's all directors want.) He dug deeper. He searched for nuance and subtext in his characters and dialogue. He and his actors struggled to reach the why of all the chaos the script threw at them.........so instead of having dead bodies drop every three minutes to meet a standardized quota, Pollack's thrillers took their time to set up the high drama of their stories. When people die in "The Yakuza" (and we don't think it's a spoiler to tell you that given the subject matter, lots of them do..) it means something. You care. They're not pop up stick figures in an arcade game.
We love "The Yakuza" for the very thing that dumbfounded critics.....its dual nature as both a raging, violent, revenge tale and yet also a thoughtful culture clash between the weary soldier of fortune Mitchum and the quietly fierce ex-Yakuza (Ken Takakura). And that's as much of the intricate plot as we're going to discuss here.....describing it in detail would make this post longer than a Bollywood musical. But to further point out Sydney Pollack's brilliance, we will tell you that there's a third act twist that deepens the already star-crossed fates of the film's major characters....not to mention any number of sawed off pinky fingers...(the Yakuza's time honored, public display of fulfilling an obligation, declaring loyalty, or apologizing. This is one movie where saying "Love means never having to say you're sorry" will only work if you accompany it with your severed finger....)
So the BQ raises our samurai sword to "The Yakuza" and its director Sydney Pollack, one of the last craftsman who created the 'thinking man's thriller', a unique genre that's now virtually extinct......4 stars (****)
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