Review

Violent Cop

Dir. Takeshi Kitano. 1989. N/R. 103mins. In Japanese, with subtitles. "Beat" Takeshi, Maiko Kawakami, Makoto Ashikawa.

Let's hear it for truth in advertising: Takeshi Kitano's directorial debut, made a decade ago and receiving a very belated U.S. theatrical release on the coattails of his 1998 art-house hit Fireworks (Hana-Bi), is, indeed, about a violent cop. Screenwriters struggling to condense their byzantine stories into a single pitch-friendly sentence will be awestruck to discover the existence of a movie that can be accurately summarized in a mere two words.

?Kitano, impassive as ever, plays the title role, the steely-eyed, quick-tempered flatfoot Azuma. There is a superficial drug-smuggling plot, involving both police corruption and the abduction of Azuma's sister, but it exists only to provide a suitable context for a lot of authoritative ass kicking. Kitano throws the occasional pleasant narrative curveball—when was the last time you saw an extended chase sequence on foot in which the pursuer eventually gets winded and gives up?—but for the most part, this is a movie about a guy who shoots/kicks/punches first and asks questions if/when the suspect regains consciousness.

?The character calls to mind the eponymous lawmen in Bad Lieutenant and Dirty Harry, but where Keitel's cop was an anguished, tormented addict and Eastwood's a self-righteous avenging angel, Azuma is little more than a garden-variety thug. Many of the shit-kicking scenes are clearly intended to be blackly comic, but at the risk of coming across like a hopeless P.C. wuss, I have to confess that I find it a bit difficult to chuckle at police brutality after looking at newspaper photos of Abner Louima.

?While the movie has none of the psychological complexity of Kitano's later work, it's just as formally rigorous; I'd estimate that something like 30 percent of the movie's total running time is devoted simply to shots of Azuma walking. In a way, Violent Cop occupies a strange no-film's-land: too simplistic to qualify as art, too austere to really work as exploitative trash. Egghead cineastes are likely to be as puzzled by it as hard-core action fans. (Opens Fri; Cinema Village.)—Mike D'Angelo