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The Yakuza Papers 1: Battles Without Honor and Humanity
The Yakuza Papers 1: Battles Without Honor and Humanity
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The Yakuza Papers 1: Battles Without Honor and Humanity

The Yakuza Papers 1: Battles Without Honor and Humanity

1973
Drama, Crime
1h 39m
Kinji Fukasaku directed this powerful and uncompromising look at the deadly stakes of life among the Yakuza -- the Japanese Mafia. Shozo Hirono (Bunta Sugawara) is a former Japanese soldier who, following his nation's defeat in World War II, finds himself in a prison cell in Hiroshima on a murder charge. While behind bars, Hirono gains a loyal friend in fellow criminal Wagasugi (Tatsuo Umemiya), and upon his release Hirono joins Wagasugi in an underworld gang. What starts as a seemingly easy way to earn some quick money becomes something darker and bloodier... (All Movie Guide)

Directed by:

Kinji Fukasaku

Screenwriter:

Kazuo Kasahara, Koichi Iiboshi

Starring:

Tamio Kawaji, Kunie Tanaka, Hiroki Matsukata, Bunta Sugawara, Tsunehiko Watase, Takuzô Kawatani, Eiko Nakamura, Gorô Ibuki, Nobuo Kaneko, Hiroshi Nawa, Asao Uchida

Franchise:

Battles Without Honor and Humanity

Genres:

Drama, Crime

AKA:

Jingi naki tatakai

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese
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The Yakuza Papers 1: Battles Without Honor and Humanity

1973
Drama, Crime
1h 39m
Your probable score
Ratings & Reviews Cast Collections Similar Stats Trailer
Avg Percentile 60.33% from 187 total ratings
Ratings & Reviews Cast Collections Similar Stats Trailer

Ratings & Reviews

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mentaculusMentaculus
Rated 14 Jan 2017
84
80th
I forgot just how much fun these movies are. (Bursts of savage violence! Betrayal! Blood!) Fukasaku was going for the visceral and the jugular - so personally, I think anyone trying to keep track of the madness is missing part of the method. This is chaos, an anarchy of souls and men suffering from post-war radiation poisoning, and passing the symptoms along to everyone else. Post-apocalypse.
Rated 14 Jan 2017
jschlanskyJSchlansky
Rated 05 Jan 2017
61
45th
Man these Yakuza ought to get higher caliber handguns so it doesn't take 8 shots to the chest to kill someone
Rated 05 Jan 2017
thedenizenTheDenizen
Rated 15 Sep 2012
85
91st
The first film of Kinji Fukasaku's gangster epic introduces a bewildering number of characters in the first minutes, and then proceeds to murder the vast majority of them. Fukasaku uses a ton of handheld camera work to drop the viewer right into the middle of the chaotic action, and the movie does an excellent job of capturing the flavor of absolute anarchy presiding over the black market era in postwar Japan. The ending leaves plot threads unresolved, but hey that's what sequels are for.
Rated 15 Sep 2012
obdurateObdurate
Rated 14 Jan 2015
85
81st
I got Yakuza bias because I'm fascinated by them, and I'm looking forward to watching the other movies in the series. Crazy violent, but not without a sense of (dark) humour. It's hard to follow, especially at the beginning when a lot of people are introduced, but it straightens itself out somewhat. The scheming, the betrayals and the murder are all intriguing, bolstered by an incredible score. It makes room for the sequel, but still ends with a degree of closure (not a bullshit ending).
Rated 14 Jan 2015
barthalenBarthalen
Rated 29 Aug 2011
72
62nd
Blasts along at a crazy pace, making it hard to keep track of the cartload of characters and their motivations. The presentation was pretty slick, and fans of organised crime style executions will have a field day with this. While I initially had a lot of fun with all the plotting, yakuza schemes and betrayals, the film doesn't really offer more than that, repeated many a time.
Rated 29 Aug 2011
psimpsim
Rated 05 Oct 2023
74
43rd
The film is a bit overwhelming in terms of its number or characters and narrative developments, but it effectively conveys the cutthroat world of the Japanese underground.
Rated 05 Oct 2023
kenmeistersKenMeisters
Rated 18 Apr 2023
82
88th
Wild ride through the Japanese underworld after WWII with massive brawls, many betrayals and enough loyalty to influence an entire genre of filmmaking.
Rated 18 Apr 2023
hawkinsHawkins
Rated 31 Aug 2022
58
22nd
Visceral, turbulent, difficult to keep track of, ultimately a messy ensemble of freeze-frame kills and maims. The fashion of the 70's seems to invade the post-war setting, as the Yakuza dress with a touch of disco fever. Pretty sure gold-rimmed Elvis shades weren't around in the 40's, but I can't deny the rule of cool...
Rated 31 Aug 2022
zarkonZarkon
Rated 20 Feb 2021
80
53rd
You can draw a straight line from this film to Takeshi Kitano's Outrage series. Where Kitano's films exude a stylish, refined confidence, Fukasaku's original is often sloppy and raw in its pursuit of a based-n-a-true-story realism -- even the dialogue, spoken entirely in the somewhat hard to understand Hiroshima dialect, plays into this.
Rated 20 Feb 2021
edkrakedkrak
Rated 18 Nov 2018
60
44th
Chaotic and rather unremarkable. It's just constant backstabbing between gangsters that gets really repetitive. Not bad, but nothing memorable either. Toei had plenty of better flicks coming out at that time.
Rated 18 Nov 2018
moribunnyMoribunny
Rated 21 Jul 2018
55
44th
Fairly action-packed and caters well enough to the expectations of the genre's audience to have spawned a long series of sequels, but the film lacks humanity in more than just the intended sense; it has nothing but straight Yakuza talk and mob violence. This isn't Mario Puzo. There is very little depth to the many characters. Even when an overlay text tells you who you just saw getting killed, it's often too much effort to connect the name to anything.
Rated 21 Jul 2018
driscarpindriscarpin
Rated 13 Oct 2017
92
91st
Os Documentos da Yakuza 1 DVD Versátil Cinema Yakuza Volume 2
Rated 13 Oct 2017
synthonosynthono
Rated 01 Mar 2013
84
69th
Quite brutal yet surprisingly funny - it's a dark comedy, but the finger cutting scene is hilarious, as is the scene where everyone tries to weasel out of an execution. The breakneck pace makes it somewhat exhilarating, but it also makes it difficult to follow, as characters are constantly being introduced and killed off. Also, a mistake in car choice makes the timeline difficult to figure out.
Rated 01 Mar 2013
natebarriosnatebarrios
Rated 13 Jul 2011
80
87th
Freakin' crazy!
Rated 13 Jul 2011
netkevinnetkevin
Rated 26 Dec 2010
90
52nd
An extremely jarring and poignant examination of the utter brutality, senselessness and futility of the violent life of organized crime in Japan in the wake of and beyond the end of the Second World War.
Rated 26 Dec 2010
jeffvjeff_v
Rated 08 Mar 2010
70
65th
The first installment of Kenji Fukasaku's five-part yakuza saga tells of the origins of the Yamamori family in Hiroshima after World War II. The first five minutes introduce dozens of characters who are almost impossible to keep track of, but who are nearly all killed (with an accompanying blast from Toshiaki Tsushima's score) by the time the film concludes. You need a scorecard to figure out what's going on and who's ahead, and the film is ridiculously violent.
Rated 08 Mar 2010
ronthedogronthedog
Rated 12 May 2009
76
17th
Guns, swords, gangs. Japan.
Rated 12 May 2009

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