A Family (Netflix) is a toned-down blend of yakuza genre filmmaking and family life drama that explores the bonds of human connection for those living outside of society’s norms — orphaned gangsters, crime lords in their shielded lairs, and red light district workers who want something more, for something else in life to make a difference.

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The year is 1999. Kenji Yamamoto (Go Ayano) arrives late for his father’s funeral, wearing his bleach blonde mop with apathy and bloody knuckles with misplaced bravado. Kenji (Hiroshi Tachi), a gallant, old-school gangster with the usual coterie of flunkies in garish suits, commits penny ante crime on the streets of industrial Aichi prefecture, eventually falling into the orbit of local yakuza boss Shibazaki (Hiroshi Tachi).

Shibazaki takes “Lil Ken” under his wing, and before long, the former street punk is a trusted lieutenant. Kenji is devoted to Shibazaki, his paternal grandfather, and his fellow yakuza are his de facto family. The gangster’s life has given him meaning, but his soul is still tormented.

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Shibazaki’s gang controls some of the graft in town, while another yakuza group controls another. It’s the usual chest-thumping and territorial squabbling, with the law acting as a grudging intermediary, led by Osako (Ryo Iwamatsu).

The cops and the city want the yakuza elements gone, and a thriving economy is putting a strain on their traditional source of income. Turf battles and tough talk lead to an assassination attempt on Shibazaki, a transgression Kenji cannot tolerate, and he takes the fall for the murder of a rival henchman, even though he’d finally found a woman who’d tolerate and push back against his brusque nature. Yuka (Machiko Ono) is left with only a news report about Kenji’s arrest to watch.

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Fast forward. 15 years. Kenji did his part and kept his mouth shut, but now he’s back outside to find a completely different landscape. The boss is a shell who is dying of cancer, and the yakuza are also dying off. “The laws governing cell phone contracts make purchasing a phone difficult for yakuza,” an underling informs Kenji.

The clubs they used to run are no longer in operation; society has moved on. And so has Yuka, though she’s embarrassed to admit she still harbors romantic feelings for her mobster true love. Kenji, now an outcast, roams the streets as a gangster without a home, criminal means, or, worse, his adoptive family.

“I considered dissolving it,” his boss, Kenji’s surrogate father, says from his hospital bed. “But who is willing to save the guys who can only exist as yakuza?” In the end, duty and honor cannot triumph over money.”

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What movies will it make you think of? Takeshi Kitano’s Outrage trilogy, which began with the first film in 2010, is fascinating in its way of subverting the standards of the genre while elevating the formative parts. Meanwhile, the 2017 film Lost Girls & Love Hotels offered a different perspective on companionship among people excluded by Japanese society, including not only yakuza gangsters but also expatriates and unmarried professional women.

Also read: School Tales The Series: Netflix’s Terrifying Anthology of School Horror Stories

Watch This Performance: Go Ayano (Rage) brilliantly carries A Family, transporting Kenji’s quaking internal self from late-1990s street punk to 2000s suited-up Yakuza soldier and on to 2015, when he’s the last gangster standing in a world that’s moved on from his ilk.

For Kenji, Ayano adopts a deceptive hangdog stance, with only the occasional brush of a grin across his usual mask of dejected indifference. But we can see his sense of honor and feel it when it is violated.

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Memorable Dialogue: Osako, the Organized Crime Bureau detective who is a skilled, cynical player on both sides, tells Shibazaki how it is and how it will be. “It is no longer just the police and the law’s responsibility to punish the Yakuza.” You will be exterminated by the entire world.” 

The Yakuza are washing in a bathhouse, their irezumi tattooing on full display in this private setting, away from society, among their criminal family.

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“How do the yakuza live?” we ask. What is the purpose of wearing sunglasses at night? Calling each other’s boss and brother? I never imagined meeting the real thing.” Kenji admires Yuka because she openly mocks his self-importance and the trappings of gangsterdom.

She isn’t afraid to offer him what he’s always desired: genuine kindness and normal life. Sure, Kenji found a father figure in Shibazaki, but even the boss recognizes that the yakuza gang’s familial structure is largely a fabrication, a lie concocted to justify the criminal’s position in the social hierarchy.

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And when Kenji realizes that modern society has moved on from organized crime, it is Yuka’s purity and promise that he is most ashamed of tarnishing. The notes A Family has been playing since the beginning become the most resonant in its final section, as the defrocked gangster walks the streets as a pariah. 

 

Michihito Fujii’s film may be heavy on sentiment, but it also doesn’t shy away from the jarring violence that has become synonymous with the yakuza genre. The criminal element is accompanied by brandished baseball bats and knives plunged into stomachs, as well as their ever-present cigarettes and rings of acrid smoke.

 

Fujii uses the landscape of industrial Japan as a binding agent, framing smokestacks as forlorn towers to progress and employing tonnes of natural light to lend internal spaces a sense of confinement longing to be free, equating these two sides — a life of crime versus everyday existence. Family bonds, formed, broken, and reformed, are depicted here with a wonderful sense of how sacred and fragile those bonds truly are. 

STREAM IT IS OUR CALL. While Michihito Fujii’s film A Family is steeped in the yakuza genre machismo, it is really a meditation on the concept of family as a basic human need.