01 A yakuza exile rebuilds a criminal foothold in Los Angeles alongside his younger half-brother.
10 Best Yakuza Movies
By Vlad Zakh · October 19, 2026
Yakuza cinema runs from stylish, near-silent Takeshi Kitano crime dramas to the sprawling, documentary-style gang sagas that built the genre in the 1970s, and it’s stayed one of Japan’s most reliably exported forms.
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02 A reformed gangster's attempt to go straight is derailed by his old gang's enemies hunting him down.
03 A brutal, unorthodox detective's own methods start blurring the line between cop and criminal.
04 A real, self-destructive gangster's rise and fall is told with almost total disregard for his own survival.
05 A yakuza fresh out of prison falls into an obsessive bond with a gambling-addicted woman.
06 A retired detective's debts and his wife's illness push him toward one last desperate crime.
07 A yakuza boss's petty betrayal against a rival gang spirals into an all-out turf war.
08 A hitman ranked third-best in Japan is targeted by an even more elusive assassin above him.
09 A weary yakuza enforcer's forced vacation on a quiet beach becomes an unexpected respite before violence returns.
10 A sprawling, chaotic gang war unfolds across postwar Hiroshima with almost no clear heroes.
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