Arrow Video: American Yakuza (1993) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Arrow Video

Last year around April, Arrow Video assembled a massive nine film Blu-ray boxed set consisting of Japanese company Toei Films’ V-Cinema straight-to-video line where budgets were small but the sky was the limit in terms of what you could get away with compared to more expensive theatrical features.  Spanning between 1989 and 1994, the V-Cinema movement became a lucrative non-theatrical film distribution business for Toei and it was only a matter of time before they decided to try and break out into Western markets such as North America.  

Co-written by The Grudge and Dark Water screenwriter Takashige Ichise, directed by future Constantine screenwriter Frank A. Cappello and prominently starring Viggo Mortensen in one of his earliest roles opposite Audition star Ryô Ishibashi speaking his English lines phonetically, Toei V-Cinema’s first foray into the North American marketplace with American Yakuza comes to Arrow Video for the first time in a new 2K scan of the original camera negative with plentiful extras and is a solid ultraviolent yarn.
 
Nick Davis (Viggo Mortensen) is laying low, on the surface an ex-con seeking refuge in factory work that turns out to be commandeered by a Japanese yakuza faction.  On the job one day, a raid ensues with many bullets fired and fallen bodies with the head of the Yakuza family Shuji (Ryô Ishibashi) narrowly evading death when Nick rescues him in a raging shootout and car escape that rival some of the big Hollywood action movies.  

Taken under Shuji’s wing much to the chagrin of other Yakuza unkeen on an American entering their faction, Nick quickly ascends stature in the Yakuza world.  Unbeknownst to Shuji and others in tow, Nick’s just a pseudonym and in reality he is undercover FBI agent David Brandt.  Trying to maintain his fake identity and ingrain himself further into the inner workings of the Yakuza world about to go to war with the Mafia, Nick/David soon finds himself torn between loyalties to both sides and is forced to choose between crime, a young Japanese woman he comes to love and his own bond with the crime boss that grows increasingly personal and morally conflicted.

 
Co-starring Alligator star Robert Forster, Michael Nouri and Nicky Katt from Grindhouse and featuring what could be characterized as a dress rehearsal of sorts for actor Viggo Mortensen who would later take on the dual conflicting roles between crime and crimefighting in David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence as well as Eastern Promises, American Yakuza though scrappy manages to pack a little punch of its own.  While the synth Casio keyboard score by The Prophecy composer David Williams is pretty cheap sounding, visually speaking its a pretty well-rounded gritty V-Cinema flick which very well looks better now than it originally did on video.  

Viggo Mortensen is giving 110% in a role that’s broadly drawn, breathing life and energy into an otherwise strait-laced heroic character.  Ryô Ishibashi’s English is a little rusty but works for this bilingual English-Japanese crime yarn.  Playing the skeptical angry yakuza is The Karate Kid Part II actor Yuji Okumoto and Michael Nouri as the ruthless Mafia boss who is all smiles and handshakes publicly but will pay off someone to assassinate you plays his bad guy part with relish.  Anzu Lawson isn’t given a whole lot to do beyond getting naked with Viggo Mortensen as the love interest but they play off of each other well enough.

 
Released in conjunction with the 1994 American-Japanese actioner Blue Tiger as part of a brief movement to make larger V-American movies, American Yakuza did well enough with critics and on-demand HBO rentals in 1994 followed by a tape release a year later that it prompted the production of No Way Back featuring Russell Crowe.  Filled with bloody violent shootouts, Yakuza sword fighting, dragon tattoos and gunslinging alongside together ala Hard Boiled or one of Takashi Miike’s Dead or Alive films and effectively the very first V-America film, the film was one of those former bargain bin public domain titles that was finally given a proper makeover by Toei Pictures and Arrow Video.  

Featuring an audio commentary and interview with the director, newly filmed interviews with Viggo Mortensen and Ryô Ishibashi, the new Arrow Video disc is solid and for owners of the V-Cinema box from Arrow this feels like a trans-continental bonus feature to that set.  Viggo Mortensen’s a terrific actor who gave an A-list action performance in ostensibly a B-movie and Ryô Ishibashi is also a brilliant overqualified performer in his own right, making this a surprising and involved low-budget thriller well worth rediscovering in Arrow’s splendid new edition.

--Andrew Kotwicki