Flowers, Fire
and a Violent Cop

Who is He?
Who is Takeshi Kitano?

Kitano Takeshi no Eiga
Brief synopses of Kitano's films.

Blood, Guns and Baseball
An essay about the themes and techniques in his films.

Forum
Discussion of Takeshi Kitano.

About Me
Who am I? And why did I create this site?

Partners in Crime
Links.

A homeless Japanese man eats a bowl of noodles.

Cut to a mid-shot of him. A football lands in his lap and bounces away. He ignores it.

We laugh at the ridiculous nothingness of the situation - watching a nobody doing nothing; at least, nothing very interesting.

Boys surround him, laughing and jeering, but still he doesn't react. Then, in a long shot that allows us no respite from his impassive face, they brutally beat him to a pulp before running home.

We never see the homeless man again.

He is no longer important to us.

The above describes the opening of Violent Cop, Kitano's first film as director. The scene that follows introduces us to his character when he walks into the home of one of the kids and slaps him about.

This site is concerned with the themes in his work and the techniques he uses to communicate them.