Violent Cop

Detective Azuma does not follow rules, beats confessions out of suspects in the street, and his superiors carry him only as long as he gets results. While looking into yakuza drug traffic a friend of his dies in suspicious circumstances, and then his sister, who is unwell, is taken. From that point Azuma stops being a policeman. It ends with his own death. Takeshi Kitano directed and starred, his first time behind the camera, with Maiko Kawakami, Hakuryu and Ittoku Kishibe in the cast. How the film got here is more interesting than the plot. Kinji Fukasaku was the original director and left after failing to agree with the producer Kazuyoshi Okuyama over the action sequences and the schedule. Kitano took over and imposed his own method of working in single takes, saying he had staked his career on single attempts since his Asakusa days. The script changed completely too. The project was meant to adapt a Ryuzo Saki novel about insurance fraud. After the incident in which Kitano assaulted staff at the magazine Friday the situation shifted: an actor with a conviction could not play a criminal, so the material was turned into a police story. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 83 percent with an average of 7.8. It became the start of Kitano's career as a director. The break was over the schedule. Fukasaku wanted two straight months of shooting; Kitano had seven weekly television shows at the time and said the filming would have to be arranged around him. Fukasaku refused and walked. Once Kitano took over he imposed a rule of one rehearsal and one take per scene, and convincing a veteran crew of that was as hard as the film itself. Who it is for: viewers who like cold, unexplained violence and Kitano's fixed frames. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a police procedural to resolve. The film is not interested in the investigation and watches one man come apart.