CAT OF THE DAY 027: THE YAKUZA (1974)

Heavyweights Paul Schrader and Robert Towne were responsible for the screenplay of this cracking east-meets-west thriller – directed by Sydney Pollack in his interesting 1970s period – in which Robert Mitchum goes to Tokyo and teams up with Japanese superstar Ken Takakura to rescue an American shipping magnate’s daughter from local gangsters.

There’s a lot of double-crossing interwoven with high-toned samurai philosophising, but it all boils down to Takakura’s supercool swordplay, while Big Bob crashes through paper screens with a shotgun and – unlike Michael Douglas in Black Rain – gets to grips with the ancient Yakuza custom of Yubitsume, ritual amputation of the pinky finger.

In this picture, we see Herb Edelman (probably best known as Dorothy’s ex-husband in The Golden Girls) as Wheat, a peace-loving American expat living in Tokyo. We know he is peace-loving because he has a couple of cats, one of which he clutches in terror when Japanese gangsters break into his home and try to shoot and/or stab everyone in sight. There are several casualties but, as far as we can see, none of them are feline.

So that’s all right, then.

Related articles

• Paul Schrader’s THE CANYONS Trailer Is Disastrously Bad (badassdigest.com)
• See Lindsay Lohan and James Deen Kiss in the Weird New Trailer for The Canyons (jezebel.com)