Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Police Tactics

1974 1h 41m JA

👍

7.0

SOLID

★7.0TMDB · 51

CrimeDramaAction

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

As Japan gears up for the 1964 Olympic Games, the cops start to crack down on the gangs, under pressure from the public and the press, adding a new dimension in the war for power among the yakuza families of Hiroshima.

“Some stories are better left unspoiled.”

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Cast

Bunta Sugawara
Shozo Hirono
Tatsuo Umemiya
Shinichi Iwai
Toshio Kurosawa
Shigeru Takemoto
Kunie Tanaka
Masakichi Makihara
Shingo Yamashiro
Shoichi Eda
Ichirō Ogura
Hiroshi Nozaki
Akio Hasegawa
Yasuki Fukuda
Shinichirō Mikami
Hidemitsu Kawada

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Kinji Fukasaku
Writers: Koichi Iiboshi, Kazuo Kasahara
Languages: Japanese
Countries: Japan

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Shot for just $0.1M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Grossed $2M — a 17.1× return. The kind of profit studios chase for a decade.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

ERA

Did you know

52 years old — a genuine piece of film history.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

CINEMA

Did you know

Part of the "The Yakuza Papers Collection" — so the characters or world continue elsewhere.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Kinji Fukasaku, shot by Sadaji Yoshida. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Toshiaki Tsushima. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Shintarō Miyamoto shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Bunta Sugawara and Tatsuo Umemiya and Toshio Kurosawa carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Kinji Fukasaku directs. Sadaji Yoshida behind the camera. Toshiaki Tsushima scores. Shintarō Miyamoto cuts. Made its budget back several times over at the box office. Produced in Japan. Dialogue in Japanese.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Shot for just $0.1M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.
2Grossed $2M — a 17.1× return. The kind of profit studios chase for a decade.
352 years old — a genuine piece of film history.
4Part of the "The Yakuza Papers Collection" — so the characters or world continue elsewhere.
5Directed by Kinji Fukasaku, shot by Sadaji Yoshida. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
6Original score by Toshiaki Tsushima. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
7Editor Shintarō Miyamoto shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
8Bunta Sugawara and Tatsuo Umemiya and Toshio Kurosawa carry the top of the cast.
9IMDB entry: tt0071696 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
10Only 51 TMDB ratings — you're getting ahead of the curve on this one.
11Classified under 12 themes, including "assassination", "police", "yakuza", "gang war".

The technical file

Cinematography: Sadaji Yoshida
Original score: Toshiaki Tsushima
Editing: Shintarō Miyamoto
Production design: Norimichi Igawa
Costume design: Toshikazu Matsumoto
Runtime: 101 min · 1h 41m
Status: Released
Budget: $125,000
Box office: $2,140,000
Return: 1712% of budget
Original language: JA
IMDB: Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Police Tactics (1974)

Part of

The Yakuza Papers Collection

While The Godfather romanticized the American Mafia in the early 1970s, Kinji Fukasaku's five-film series known as The Yakuza Papers: Battles Without Honor & Humanity revolutionized the Japanese yakuza film with unprecedented intensity. A post-World War II epic that broke Japanese box-office records, this complex, utterly authentic cycle of gangster films replaced the popular ninkyo or "chivalry" films of the '60s with jitsuroku, an entirely new breed of gangster film that rose from the ashes of Hiroshima and post-war reconstruction, depicting a meticulously detailed "alternate history" that had been ignored by the "official" factual record.