Harry Kilmer
Created by Paul & Leonard Schrader and Robert Towne

Imagine Chandler writing a samurai flick...

In this forgotten classic from the mid-seventies, Robert Mitchum is HARRY KILMER, an ex-G.I., and sometime P.I. (his past is suitably murky), set loose in modern day Japan, to rescue an old Army buddy's daughter from gangsters, and finding himself awash in a bloody mess of betrayal and questions of honour. To rescue the girl, Harry must confront the woman he left behind, and put his faith in an old enemy who owes him a favor. And he learns a very important lesson: people who live in paper houses shouldn't play with swords.

An excellent script by Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver) and Robert Towne (Chinatown) (which sold for $300,000, the highest amount ever paid for a screenplay at the time) and one of Mitchum's greatest performances brings it all home in living, bloody colour.

TRIVIA

• Supposedly, Martin Scorsese, hot off Mean Streets (1973), wanted to direct but the producers wanted Sydney Pollack.,

FILM

• THE YAKUZA....Buy this video....Buy this DVD
  (AKA The Brotherhood of the Yakuza)
  (1975, Warner Brothers)
  Written by Paul & Leonard Schrader and Robert Towne
  Directed by Sydney Pollack
  Starring Robert Mitchum as HARRY KILMER
  Also starring Brian Keith, Ken Takakura, Herb Edelman, Richard Jordan, Kishi Keiko

NOVELIZATION

• The Yakuza (1975, by Leonard Schrader)

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Thanks to Big Al Hubin for the well-deserved whack on the head.