Sonatine: Shochiku Films/ Rolling Thunder Pictures/ Miramax Films Rating: USA: R/ UK: 18
Looking at the cover of Japanese director ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano’s (Violent Cop, Boiling Point, Fireworks) 1993 film Sonatine can be a bit misleading. On a casual inspection, Sonatine looks like yet another stylish Asian action flick—one dealing with the Yakuza and sure to feature some incredible setpieces as well as some dazzling gunplay. And while the film is an action movie in the most rudimentary sense of the term, it’s honestly more of a deconstruction of the genre’s standards—one filled with interesting characters, strange visual juxtapositions, and a definite existential sense of dread.
Kitano stars as Murakawa, a mid-level Yakuza with his own territory to control. He’s summoned by his bosses, who request that he and his men travel to Okinawa to aid in negotiating a settlement between warring clans. Murakawa finds the situation suspicious, yet goes anyway—only to discover that his fears were well founded. After killing a group of local assassins (who tried to assassinate him), he and his crew head for an isolated beach house where they can hide out while things blow over and plan their next move.
For it’s first forty or so minutes, Sonatine is your standard action film. Murakawa and his fellow Yakuza are little more than your standard American mafia gangsters. Yes, they’re more honor bound than their American counterparts and probably far more philosophical as well, but at its core, it’s an action movie filled with your standard action film situations and dialogue.
However, when Murakawa and company must leave Okinawa for the isolated beach house, Sonatine becomes something much more interesting—a character study wherein all the classic gangster archetypes are reduced to their true essence. One scene, near the middle of the film, sums up Murakawa, and Sonatine, perfectly.
While sitting on the beach with Miyuki (a young girl Murakawa rescued from being raped on the beach) she says to him:
"It’s great to not be afraid of shooting people—not being afraid of killing people means not being afraid of dying yourself, right? You’re a tough guy, I like tough guys."
Murakawa responds "I wouldn’t carry a gun if I were tough."
"But you can shoot fast."
"I shoot fast because I get scared first."
"But you’re not afraid of dying."
"When you’re scared all of the time, you almost wish you were dead."
In that one brief exchange, Kitano has deconstructed the essence of the entire gangster film subgenre. Here’s a man who admits that he’s only successful as a killer because he’s afraid of dying. Murakawa’s a man who takes no joy from life because he’s constantly afraid of death—yet he finds himself often wishing that he were dead, if for nothing else than to rid himself of the constant fear.
The beach sequences are definitely the most interesting in the film—both in a visual sense and a philosophical way as well. The early part of the movie is filled with lots of gray and other dark tones. There’s very little bright color in the early part of the film—save for the red of blood. Yet, once Murakawa and company reach the beach, Kitano fills his palette full of vibrant hues. There’s a definite correlation between the color and the characters’ moods. In Tokyo, where everything is dark and dreary, Murakawa and his soldiers are deadly serious gangsters who show little or no emotion. However, once on the beach, surrounded by the vibrant colors, the tough Yakuza become almost childlike—playing games, goofing off, dancing, and having a grand old time. Everyone’s at ease on the beach, far away from their everyday problems and the constant threat of violence.
In a way, Sonatine is almost the antithesis of the standard American and Hong Kong action film—and one gets the feeling that it’s an action film that only the Japanese could make. There’s a definite sense of restraint at work here, and the violence, while generally stark, is never stylized or glamorous. In fact, it’s so plain, so uninspired, that it’s essentially pointless. Gunfights are waged in the most static fashion possible—with everyone drawing a weapon, standing straight up and down, and firing until they run out of bullets. There’s no diving for cover, no screaming, no emotion, no movement save for the twitching of trigger fingers. It’s a workmanlike effort that demonstrates that this is little more than a job to the people involved—which stands in stark contrast to the American and Hong Kong style of gunplay…a style filled with loads of theatrics and extraneous movements.
And while most American audiences might have difficulty identifying with both Kitano’s defiantly Japanese sensibilities and his penchant for minimalism, the efforts certainly ring true with the characters. Murakawa is a man of few words and little in the way of wasted motion. He’s economical, willing to size up any given situation as thoroughly as possible before committing to a course of action. Kitano captures the essence of this perfectly, reminding me of a great white shark—content to size you up with his piercing eyes, then striking with savage fury when the time is right. It’s a mesmerizing performance—one that demonstrates why Kitano is one of Japan’s biggest stars.
Sonatine is a minimalist film in every conceivable way—whether it’s through the performances (there’s very little dialogue in the film—everything is revealed through action), the largely static long takes (Kitano leaves the camera in one position for many shots, allowing cars, characters, etc. to wander in and out of the frame as the scene reaches its conclusion), or in Jo Hisaishi’s haunting score (which repeats itself throughout the film, yet manages to meld beautifully with the mood of each scene it’s in). There’s no narrative, stylistic, or artistic excess in this film. Kitano has reduced everything to its base denominator—and it makes for some incredible viewing.
In the end, Sonatine is a fantastic film—probably Takeshi Kitano’s finest (I say probably since there are a few of his films I haven’t seen yet). And while it might be too ponderous and Japanese for folks who’ve been weaned on the works of Schwarzenegger and Stallone, it’s definitely a film worth seeing for fans of intelligent cinema. I give Sonatine my highest recommendation. Check it out.
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