Sono otoko, kyōbō ni tsuki (Violent Cop)

With his directorial debut, Japanese comedy superstar Kitano Takeshi immediately established himself as an idiosyncratic auteur filmmaker and laid the foundation for one of the most extraordinary cinema careers of the following decades. His unmistakable minimalist style as a director was complemented by his ingenious poker face: Kitano himself plays the Violent Cop (the original title roughly translates as: Warning, this man is wild), who is notorious for his brutal methods and takes on a violent yakuza gang as well as his corrupt superiors. Kitano's picturesque ballad of violence is steeped in black humour and electrically stylised in its interplay of explosion and standstill. His leap to cult filmmaker came about rather by chance after the original director, Fukasaku Kinji, dropped out. Kitano: ‘My crew was as afraid of me as I was of them.’ (C.H.)