THE YAKUZA

Provocative screenwriter Paul Schrader’s (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull…) first script. Written with his brother Leonard, who in the 70s lived in Japan, and actually hung out in Yakuza circles. Before this, the Japanese crime syndicates had only been seen in the homespun Japanese gangster movies so popular there during the 60s and 70s, but with this neo noir the Schrader brothers made the first international movie about the mysterious rituals and codes of the Japanese netherworld.