The Yakuza | Full Movie | Movies Anywhere

It moves slowly, with dignity, stressing ritual at the expense of dynamics.

Just when the film appears irretrievably stuck in a morass of explications and local colour, though, it escalates into its action phase and takes on something of the energy and character of the genre it discusses.

Imagine The Big Sleep shot in the back alleys of Tokyo and you have something of the muddled mood of The Yakuza, a cultural cross-breed that is neither sushi nor Southern fried chicken.

The Yakuza is slowed down considerably by Pollack's solemnly eclectic direction and the endlessly expository dialogue which tends to make the whole exercise, bloody as it is, more explanatory than exclamatory.