The Yakuza (1974)

A tidy bit of grit here. Shot at the peak of Sydney Pollack’s directorial career—sandwiched between The Way We Were and Three Days of the Condor—The Yakuza is a smooth meditation on manly obligations and the legacies of the US occupation in Japan. After the World War Two, American soldier Harry Kilmer (Robert Mitchum) fell for a girl who was already spoken for and he never managed to get over her. Twenty years later, his grim mug is back in Tokyo to take care of some business as a favor for an old friend and to get this job done, he ends up having to call in some old favors himself. Genre hint: all favors involve gangsters and murder.