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Violent Cop
DVD/APPROX. 99 MINS/1989/JAPAN MA15+
DVD/APPROX. 99 MINS/1989/JAPAN MA15+
7
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Azuma is one bad dude – at the outset of the film, we see him beating the shit out of a teenage suspect, despite his misdemeanours, and
however well deserved – morally questionable, is a phrase that springs to mind. He’s definitely a Dirty Harry-style of cop: justice is the prime
concern, not due process. And for God’s sake, don’t fuck with his sister…
I’m unabashedly a Takeshi Kitano fan. When I’m not watching horror or exploitation films, this is the kind of thing I watch. I love old hard-boiled
detective and gangster fiction – I was weaned on Bogart, Bronson and Eastwood tough guy flicks – so this stuff is like mother’s milk to me. When
this stuff is done well (as here), it’s impressive – when it’s not (the recent Black Dahlia), it’s a lame parody of genre greats. While Kitano does
occasionally slip (Boiling Point, for example), this isn’t one of those times.
Revenge tragedy – I fuckin’ love it. Always brutal, always a slaughter-house, always cathartic. It’s a genre as old as ancient Greece (Euripides’ play
Medea, later filmed by Pasolini, is a case in point), and exemplified by other diverse texts like Seneca’s Tragedies, Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, The
Duchess of Malfi, Wuthering Heights, The Revenger’s Tragedy, Dirty Harry, High Plains Drifter, Sin City, Death Wish, The Silmarillion, countless Viking
sagas, The Niebelungenleid, Oldboy – all the Vengeance trilogy, really - Man On Fire, Memento, Mystic River, even Wagner’s Ring cycle, we have the
same basic elements: a corrupt society where justice can’t be extracted via the system, a revenger who places themselves in a bad moral
situation, working alone to achieve that justice outside the system, bloody and brutal set-pieces, rat-bastard villains (sometimes those very anti-
heroes we root for), and a tremendous sense of waste at the end, which we the audience are meant to learn from. Oh, and they’re great fun.
All present and accounted for here, let me tell you. It’s not a flawless film by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s pretty damn good, regardless,
as I’ve come to expect from Eastern Eye. Azuma appears to be waging a one-man war against scum, but becoming morally corrupted at the same
time. The police force here seem to be ineffectual, to say the least – exemplified by his image-driven chief, or his idealistic partner Kikuchi, a green-
horn rookie, unprepared for life on the streets fighting petty villains, let alone yakuza assassins like Kiyohiro, sadistic killer for mob boss Nito – but
even Kikuchi is tainted by the end, and the perversion of his innocence and idealism is part of the tragedy, as he eventually realises you have to
play dirty to win, in this kind of world. The violence escalates, in the wake of a drug dealer’s murder and we see the true extent of the corruption in
the police force. Azuma is forced to resign after beating the snot out of a ‘suspect’ – and his sister is kidnapped at the same time, as retribution
from the dealers. Unable to access justice via the usual channels, Azuma’s revenge can only take place outside the law, and it’s fucking cold and
merciless, let me tell you.
There’s a chase scene here that reminded me of the one from The Enforcer, but let me tell you right here and now that it’s not played for laughs at
the end – Azuma goes totally psychotic, lashing out with some of that “furious anger” Samuel L Jackson told us about in Pulp Fiction, albeit not to
the same extent. All through this film, we get the picture of Azuma being a tightly coiled ball of rage, ready to explode at the slightest provocation.
Azuma’s relationship with his sister seems more like a father-daughter, rather than brother-sister one – he tries to cushion her from the cruddiness
of the outside world, as well as protect her from herself, but to little avail. But if you’ve ever cared for someone, in a platonic way, who makes
terrible choices in partners, well, watching Azuma school some bastard who tries to take advantage of his sister was an extremely satisfying
experience. But at the same time, that parental care made the end of the film all that more tragic.
It’s a shitty world out there – cops on the take and selling drugs to dealers, gangsters who kidnap innocent people, rape them and hook them on
heroin, teenagers who beat up on the homeless for kicks, little kids dropping things off over-passes on to unsuspecting passers-by – and Azuma
tries to do good (albeit from a purely subjective standpoint), but given such an environment, he can’t. It’s impossible. But can he gain some
personal satisfaction, and if so, at what expense? Well, watch it and see, kids.
The violence deserves a special mention – it’s quite realistic. This is no Aja splatter flick (no human body holds that amount of blood), this is raw,
personal violence, like in all Kitano films, and it’s nasty. Don’t go in expecting buckets of blood and gore, but expect it to be vicious, and expect it to
hurt.
however well deserved – morally questionable, is a phrase that springs to mind. He’s definitely a Dirty Harry-style of cop: justice is the prime
concern, not due process. And for God’s sake, don’t fuck with his sister…
I’m unabashedly a Takeshi Kitano fan. When I’m not watching horror or exploitation films, this is the kind of thing I watch. I love old hard-boiled
detective and gangster fiction – I was weaned on Bogart, Bronson and Eastwood tough guy flicks – so this stuff is like mother’s milk to me. When
this stuff is done well (as here), it’s impressive – when it’s not (the recent Black Dahlia), it’s a lame parody of genre greats. While Kitano does
occasionally slip (Boiling Point, for example), this isn’t one of those times.
Revenge tragedy – I fuckin’ love it. Always brutal, always a slaughter-house, always cathartic. It’s a genre as old as ancient Greece (Euripides’ play
Medea, later filmed by Pasolini, is a case in point), and exemplified by other diverse texts like Seneca’s Tragedies, Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, The
Duchess of Malfi, Wuthering Heights, The Revenger’s Tragedy, Dirty Harry, High Plains Drifter, Sin City, Death Wish, The Silmarillion, countless Viking
sagas, The Niebelungenleid, Oldboy – all the Vengeance trilogy, really - Man On Fire, Memento, Mystic River, even Wagner’s Ring cycle, we have the
same basic elements: a corrupt society where justice can’t be extracted via the system, a revenger who places themselves in a bad moral
situation, working alone to achieve that justice outside the system, bloody and brutal set-pieces, rat-bastard villains (sometimes those very anti-
heroes we root for), and a tremendous sense of waste at the end, which we the audience are meant to learn from. Oh, and they’re great fun.
All present and accounted for here, let me tell you. It’s not a flawless film by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s pretty damn good, regardless,
as I’ve come to expect from Eastern Eye. Azuma appears to be waging a one-man war against scum, but becoming morally corrupted at the same
time. The police force here seem to be ineffectual, to say the least – exemplified by his image-driven chief, or his idealistic partner Kikuchi, a green-
horn rookie, unprepared for life on the streets fighting petty villains, let alone yakuza assassins like Kiyohiro, sadistic killer for mob boss Nito – but
even Kikuchi is tainted by the end, and the perversion of his innocence and idealism is part of the tragedy, as he eventually realises you have to
play dirty to win, in this kind of world. The violence escalates, in the wake of a drug dealer’s murder and we see the true extent of the corruption in
the police force. Azuma is forced to resign after beating the snot out of a ‘suspect’ – and his sister is kidnapped at the same time, as retribution
from the dealers. Unable to access justice via the usual channels, Azuma’s revenge can only take place outside the law, and it’s fucking cold and
merciless, let me tell you.
There’s a chase scene here that reminded me of the one from The Enforcer, but let me tell you right here and now that it’s not played for laughs at
the end – Azuma goes totally psychotic, lashing out with some of that “furious anger” Samuel L Jackson told us about in Pulp Fiction, albeit not to
the same extent. All through this film, we get the picture of Azuma being a tightly coiled ball of rage, ready to explode at the slightest provocation.
Azuma’s relationship with his sister seems more like a father-daughter, rather than brother-sister one – he tries to cushion her from the cruddiness
of the outside world, as well as protect her from herself, but to little avail. But if you’ve ever cared for someone, in a platonic way, who makes
terrible choices in partners, well, watching Azuma school some bastard who tries to take advantage of his sister was an extremely satisfying
experience. But at the same time, that parental care made the end of the film all that more tragic.
It’s a shitty world out there – cops on the take and selling drugs to dealers, gangsters who kidnap innocent people, rape them and hook them on
heroin, teenagers who beat up on the homeless for kicks, little kids dropping things off over-passes on to unsuspecting passers-by – and Azuma
tries to do good (albeit from a purely subjective standpoint), but given such an environment, he can’t. It’s impossible. But can he gain some
personal satisfaction, and if so, at what expense? Well, watch it and see, kids.
The violence deserves a special mention – it’s quite realistic. This is no Aja splatter flick (no human body holds that amount of blood), this is raw,
personal violence, like in all Kitano films, and it’s nasty. Don’t go in expecting buckets of blood and gore, but expect it to be vicious, and expect it to
hurt.
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| "He's a vicious detective who deals out harsh justice with an iron fist" |
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