Sonatine

Rolling Thunder Pictures brings to mind the same disastrous fate as American Zoetrope, good intentions, but poor results. The difference however is that as of 2007, Rolling Thunder Pictures is no more. Before Quentin Tarantino’s restoration, rerelease, and distribution company fell to pieces, it released a Japanese film “Sonatine” for the first time to American audiences. Given Quentin Tarantino’s shining recommendation, I assumed that the movie most be a pulp film.

“Sonatine” was written, directed, edited, produced, and starred Beat Takeshi (aka Takeshi Kitano) in 1993. The film follows a gang of Yakuza men who go to a shore side house for what’s essentially a vacation while a mob war is being negotiated back home. Beat Takeshi plays Murakawa who leads the group. However, isolated on a beach makes the men lose their minds like Jack Nicholson in “The Shining”, but none more so than Murakawa. A mixture of boredom and a loss of interest in his Yakuza job result in him becoming a practical joker to his men and a romantic for the lone woman he finds on the beach.

The Chicago Tribune praised the film by calling it “A brutal, brilliant crime thriller!” What that review, and all the reviews on the cover of the box, seemed to overlook is that the movie is essentially a look at Yakuza men on holiday. What do they do? They shoot fireworks, sumo wrestle, build sand traps, and play board games. It’s not the violent, brutal life we’ve come to expect.

That’s not to say there’s no violence in the film. There’s a bit, but like a Sergio Leone picture it goes by so quick there’s very little to take in. The energy of the gun battles also appear lacking. In one scene, Murakawa’s gang sit at a bar while a loud group of patrons chatter behind them, but once a group of three suspicious men walk in, the group of patrons stand up and fire at Murakawa’s gang. Despite the close quarters, both groups fire their weapons by simply standing up and shooting without taking any sort of cover; erase all images of Hong Kong leaping and firing slow-mo gun battles here. The survivors live almost solely because of “Pulp Fiction” type bullet dodging miracles..

Normally, I’d complain that the action is lazy and weak, but there’s a reason so blunt that even it smacked me over the head. Murakawa’s feigning interest in the Yakuza lifestyle is reflected in the unimpressive action scenes. In the bar scene, he stands firing his gun with a completely blank expression on his face; he doesn’t care whether he lives or dies. We don’t see him smile or laugh until he gets to the beach house and plays a sick Russian Roulette version of Rock, Paper, Scissors with his own men. Life floods back into Murakawa as he symbolically becomes a child again with his pranks on his colleagues. I took this to represent insanity, but I’m sure most people will find the metaphor to be much more pure like he has had a spiritual rebirth.

“Sonatine” is such a strange, uneven movie that it is even left without an ending. There’s an ending, but it feels tacked on. An unspoken rule of these films is that the hero has to go down swinging. Such doesn’t quite happen here and it leaves the audience with a bitter taste.

Beat Takeshi is primarily known in Japan as a comedian, so “Sonatine” didn’t do too well commercially in Japan. While there are more obvious reasons why the film performed disappointingly at the box office, I did think Takeshi’s performance of Murakawa was handled exceptionally well. Takeshi bounces back and forth from the drama and comedy like very few actors can. There’s also a shoot out inside an elevator which marvels the elevator shootout in “Smokin’ Aces”.

It’s great that Quentin Tarantino liked this film, but I’m the Pulp Cinema Avenger. Is this film really pulp? There’s a morally ambiguous main character, a meager budget that limits the big shoot out at the end, gratuitous violence, one really gratuitous nude scene, and a story that’s quickly abandoned. “Sonatine” has all the makings of a great pulp film, but somehow it fails to deliver the goods. It could be labeled as pulp, but I would challenge that it is not exciting enough to hold up against real trash cinema. “Sonatine” is a refreshing twist on the Yakuza genre, but it is not the blood soaked Yakuza film that we all know and love.

The Pulp Cinema Avenger appreciates originality and effort so he bestows on this film : †† out of 5.