Word: cop
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Tough Loner, whom Kitano embodies in most of his films, is bound to no nation and needs no subtitles to translate his brute magnetism. It doesn't even matter which side of the law he is nominally on: as an officer in Violent Cop and Fireworks (Hana-bi) or a yakuza in Boiling Point, Sonatine and Brother, he carries a gun and a grudge. Like the uninflected killer played by Alain Delon in Jean-Pierre Melville's classic 1967 crime film, aptly titled Le Samourai, Kitano walks slowly, stares blankly; he might be a patient whose life the surgeons have...
...directorial debut, Violent Cop, the stolid face and avenging-devil persona emerged fully formed, fists and feet blazing. The film begins with punks beating an old man senseless. One of the kids goes home; Officer Asuma (Kitano) walks into the boy's bedroom and whacks him silly. "I did nothing," the lad protests. "Then I've done nothing," the violent cop replies...
Asuma has a little trouble with anger-management. Spotting a pimp at police headquarters, he fells the guy and kicks him in the head. Out on the street, he kicks a perp when he's down; when his fellow cop jumps down to shield the man, Asuma kicks him too. The message couldn't be clearer if it were spelled out in neon above the Ginza. Good guys and bad guys use the same methods of punishment; they may be the same guys, except one has a badge. We pay the cops to do our dirty work...
Kitano took over direction of Violent Cop after Fukasaku dropped out. He didn't plan the film or write it. But it's all Kitano in its charting of an arid landscape with no easy signposts. No sentimentality here?indeed, no evident feeling. He seeks no sympathy for Asuma. The man needn't be attractive, only compelling. If you want to idolize or iconize him, that's your business...
...uncaring parents, or giving an unjust society the dynamite stick up the butt that it deserves. Freud and Lenin are not on his bookshelves. Kitano Man is just doing what he's supposed to?what he, the killing machine, is designed for. A gangster's life, like a cop's, is not romantic in these films. It's a job, a routine, like ditch-digging but with less action and a higher body count. Mostly, you wait, in a bad mood, to shoot or be shot. You hang around for the inevitable comeuppance, payback, bad luck, betrayal...