Japan's Most Chivalrous

Dogfight: Stray Dogs' Elegy

November 2000 •Japanese

A cocaine deal is about to go down between yakuza and Hong Kong triad gangsters and a small time porn peddler is used as a mole by a dirty cop.

Sonatine

September 1993 •Japanese

Murakawa, an aging Tokyo yakuza tiring of gangster life, is sent by his boss to Okinawa along with a few of his henchmen to help end a gang war, supposedly as mediators between two warring clans. He finds that the dispute between the clans is insignificant and whilst wondering why he was sent to Okinawa at all, his group is attacked in an ambush. The survivors flee and make a decision to lay low at the beach while they await further instructions.

HEAT -Incandescence- PART I

April 2004 •Japanese

A young man named Tatsumi Karasawa suddenly rises in the criminal world of Shinjuku, Tokyo, and becomes the leader of a group of amateurs who show no reluctance to face police and gangs alike. His successes in the Tokyo underground make a chief and a yakuza boss plot a conspiracy to eliminate him.

Goodbye Cruel World

September 2022 •Japanese

Anzai, Mutoh, Hamada, Hagiwara, and Miru are in a car headed to a love hotel used by the Sugiyama Clan for money laundering. This one night only gang succeed in robbing them blind and though they were supposed to go their separate ways after splitting the money, the five end up being hunt down by a detective hired by the clan and clan members themselves. An ending nobody ever even dreamed of.

First Love

May 2019 •Japanese

One night in Tokyo, Leo, a young boxer, meets his first love, Monica, an imprisoned sex worker. Caught up in a drug-smuggling scheme, they find themselves pursued by a corrupt cop, a yakuza, his nemesis, and a female assassin.

The Great Okinawa Yakuza War

September 1976 •Japanese

Chiba, looking gnarly, and acting as animalistic as ever, stars alongside Matsukata as violent gangsters battling their way through fight after bloody fight with rival yakuza on the streets of Okinawa.

Kingdom of Samurai

October 1966 •Japanese

我王伝 第一章

January 2018 •Japanese

Housenka

Invalid date •Japanese

Autumn 2023. Akutsu, an elderly inmate serving life in prison, is on the verge of a lonely death in his single cell. A flower, touch-me-not, that can talk like humans says to him, "What a rotten life you had." Through their "conversation," Akutsu starts reflecting on his past. Summer 1986. Akutsu is living with Nana, a woman six years his junior, and her son Kensuke in a shabby apartment with a garden full of touch-me-nots. A one-night victorious comeback by a dying yakuza, and the story of his family recounted by a flower that blooms in prison.

Motorpsycho!

August 1965 •English

A vengeful veterinarian and a grieving widow join forces to track down violent bikers after they commit heinous acts against their loved ones.

Overkill

December 1987 •English

A Tokyo cop is sent to Los Angeles to help an LAPD detective break up a yakuza ring operating in the city.

Taxi 2

March 2000 •French

A cabdriver and a cop race to Paris to rescue a love interest and the Japanese minister of defense from kidnappers.

The Pinkie

January 2014 •Japanese

Since they were both five, Ryosuke has been stalked by Momoko - the ugliest girl in the village. Her love for Ryosuke is so boundless that she has her face surgically altered to suit his taste - but still he wants nothing to do with her. Ryosuke goes in for fleeting romance - for example, with the girlfriend of a gangster boss. But when he finds out about their affair, he has Ryosuke's little finger hacked off. Magically, the finger falls into Momoko's hands, and she uses it to clone Ryosuke, so she can finally have him (or almost him) for herself. And this is just the first five minutes of Lisa Takeba's short-but-powerful feature debut. Just like in her previous short films, the director - who cut her teeth in the advertising world and as the writer of a video game - throws a lot of genres and techniques into the mix: from science fiction to gangster films, from hospital eroticism to animation. Hectic and absurd, but with its heart in the right place. © IFFR

Kids Return

July 1996 •Japanese

Shinji and Masaru spend most of their school days harassing fellow classmates and playing pranks. They drop out and Shinji becomes a small-time boxer, while Masaru joins up with a local yakuza gang. However, the world is a tough place.

Yakuza Emblem Legend: Chapter 14

April 2023 •Japanese

The 14th sequel to the popular series "Yakuza Crest". Hakuryu and Ichizou Matsuda team up again and expand their influence from Kansai to the whole country, advancing to the top of the Yakuza organization.

The Viper Brothers: Up on 30 Charges

March 1974 •Japanese

Part 7 in a long running (8+1 films) action/comedy/melodrama series about a pair of short tempered, amoral, but not evil chinpira (Bunta Sugawara and Tamio Kawachi) thinking too big of themselves. Katsuji finds his long lost mother, who is a rich lady of a respectable family. Comedy and melodrama ensue. A thrilling spectacle with an overly violent ending, and a remarkable, Japan's only post-prison rape comedy, Masa is determined to have sex with the female guard, despite the fact that there is a bar between them. Michi Azuma (topless swordswoman from Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in Peril) plays a tomboy who wants to join her brothers.

Young Boss

March 1965 •Japanese

After a yakuza boss is assassinated by a rival, his naval officer son returns home to take over the gang.

Boiling Point

September 1990 •Japanese

Masaki, a baseball player and gas-station attendant, gets into trouble with the local Yakuza and goes to Okinawa to get a gun to defend himself. There he meets Uehara, a tough gangster, who is in serious debt to the yakuza and planning revenge.

Gonin

September 1995 •Japanese

Five men plot to steal a large sum of money from the local yakuza, but everything does not go as planned and the men find themselves hunted down by contract killers.

The Lowest Man

September 1958 •Japanese

A young offender who is already guilty of many crimes is sentenced again for rape. Upon his release from prison, a year later, the victim waits to kill him.