Word: yakuza
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...first film as actor-director, Kitano played a policeman too violent for his department; in his next, the 1990 Boiling Point, he's Uehara, a gangster too violent for the yakuza. The movie is mainly about two baseball-crazy kids who run afoul of the mob; Kitano shows up for about a half hour before some unfriendly types splatter him across his car upholstery. But this wild man had it coming. In an interlude between gunplay, he watches a couple have sex. "My turn," he chirps. He pushes the woman aside?and jumps...
...Sonatine he's Murakawa, a big-timer, the ceo of evil?and he's "worn out," ready to retire. A yakuza gathering is like afternoon at a retirement club, each man alone in regret and anxiety. Sonatine, which secured Kitano's reputation in the West, plays like a gangster King Lear as rewritten by Samuel Beckett. The soliloquies are bloody battles, illuminated by the sheet-lightning pyrotechnics of automatic gunfire; but the rest is Kitano walking, sitting, staring. Till he blows his brains...
...Kitano gruff guy serves as a young boy's nanny, he has returned to the crime genre with Brother. Shot in Tokyo and Los Angeles, this is a hyper-violent action movie with the standard fish-out-of-water plot?only this fish is a tiger shark. A yakuza lieutenant comes to L.A. to help his half-brother, a low-level thug. Aniki, as everyone calls Kitano (Japanese for brother), has nerve, entrepreneurial skills and a lot of spare bullets. Before long, half of the L.A. underworld has eaten his lead and the other half wants to have a chat...
...Brother, Aniki hands a wad of money to the old man behind the counter. "For the repairs," he says, and walks out the door to be mowed down in gunfire that will obliterate the diner. Aniki may be a homicidal-suicidal yakuza, but you have to admire a man who leaves...
Since Beat first stepped onto a striptease stage to perform a comedy routine in 1972, he has projected this almost split personality. He has been both the archetypal Japanese macho man?the rebel, the outlaw, the yakuza?while also playing the subversive clown prince version of all those cherished tough guys. Those phoned-in TV appearances are just the flip side of the stylized cinematic tough guy. Beat plays off the public's awareness of who he is. That farcical gangster on the set of low-budget TV shows is all the more lovable because he's the deadly gangster...