Takeshi Kitano's second best yakuza film, Sonatine, gets the AV Club treatment:
One of the questions Kitano asks is, "What do gangsters do when they're not shooting each other?" The gangster genre is traditionally all about incident, about moving the story forward like a steamroller, and scrapping any elements that don't pay it service. Kitano wonders what goes on between the notes, when his yakuza thugs are removed from all that plotting and shooting, and have a little free time on their hands. (Hence the Tarantino connection, given how the gangsters inReservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction discuss the finer points of Madonna's "Like A Virgin" and McDonald's burgers in France.) As Murakawa and his clan hang out on the beach, waiting for what's certain to be discouraging news about their future, you'd think this stretch of time would be pregnant with tension. Instead, they revert to infectious, childlike behavior, as if tacitly acknowledging that their sojourn on Okinawa's beautiful beaches may be their last days in the sun.
Many of Kitano's movies feature some playtime, but unlike something like his sickly sweet 1999 road comedy Kikujiro,Sonatine's dark yakuza-movie underpinnings rescue it from being overly cute. It also helps that the games are charmingly whimsical: Sumo wrestling matches created first from paper cut-outs and then on a life-size circle on the beach; skeet-shooting contests with a Frisbee and a handgun; homemade traps built from giant holes carved out in the sand; a mock gangland shootout staged with fireworks and cardboard shields. And all of it under brilliant blue skies and a backdrop that's endless ocean on one side and rolling hills on the other. Suddenly, in the middle of a gangster movie, Kitano has transported the audience to a dreamlike idyll.
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