VIOLENT COP
Escalation to escalation
Spoilers for Violent Cop (1989). Trigger warnings for discussions of police brutality
Few films have as direct a title as Takeshi Kitano’s directorial debut Violent Cop. As a summarisation of the themes within, perhaps only Bad Lieutenant (Abel Ferrara, 1992) has a title as blunt and to the point. Yet the story behind Violent Cop is not as simple.
It was originally pitched as a comedy film, taking advantage of Kitano’s star power as a standup comedian. Kinji Fukasaku was originally set to direct, however, the difficulties in scheduling around Kitano’s TV commitments forced him to drop out. Fukasaku would direct Kitano a decade later in Battle Royale. With no one at the helm, Kitano himself offered to step in and the producers allowed him to work at his own pace.
With the change in director came a change in the style of the film. Kitano was keen to showcase his acting skills and heavily rewrote Hisashi Nozawa’s script to remove nearly all the comedy. This wasn’t fully successful, there are sudden bursts of verbal aggression from Azuma (Kitano) that feel so out of place with moments in the film that it creates a strange thread of black humour throughout the film, but the result was a much darker, neo-noir.
The film occupies a grey area, where it neither glorifies nor demonises violence. The abusive nature of the police force is explicitly stated to be a necessary, if unsavoury, response to a wave of violence on the streets. It’s a particularly dark theme to have as a throughline, yet it works to highlight the moral code that Azuma works to.
Unlike some of his colleagues and the criminals he apprehends, Azuma does have a sense of right and wrong. His outbursts are levelled at those who hurt the weak, those who attempt to take advantage of his intellectually disabled sister Akari (Maiko Kawakami) and those who have committed a crime. His violent methods and moral code mean that he is a loner amongst corrupt cops and a changing police force.
At its heart, Violent Cop is an exploration of the pointlessness of violence. The criminals escalate it, the police respond in kind and so the criminals escalate again. This idea is inserted right in the opening scene. A homeless man is assaulted by a gang of youths, for no reason other than to kill time. At the end of the attack, we discover that Azuma witnessed everything, and he follows the leader of the gang home and attacks him.
After beating the teenager, Azuma demands that he hands himself and his friends in at the police station the next morning. It’s a power play from Azuma; a man who believes that the powers of the justice system will pale in comparison to the humiliation of being slapped around.
When his superiors ask why he didn’t simply intervene, or call for backup to stop the attack, Azuma insists that his method has been more effective. That he couldn’t take all the teenagers on, and that backup would have taken too long to arrive. There’s a cold logic here, but even so, the actual assault on the teenager was pointless. He had witnessed the crime. He could have arrested the teen at his house later, much in the same way. Azuma’s desire to feel powerful drives him to extremes, something that becomes clearer as the stakes rise through the film.
And the cinematography is similarly matter-of-fact. Kitano worked with Yasushi Sasakibara to create a visual style that never looks away. The camera holds on every moment, with some takes lasting nearly a minute. It allows the audience to contemplate what they are seeing. We understand the pointlessness of it all, but can also see Azuma’s reasoning, and the long shots – that very deliberate slowing down of time – allow the weight of these collective actions to build.
Director: Takeshi Kitano
Writers: Hisashi Nozawa, Takeshi Kitano
Starring: Takeshi Kitano, Maiko Kawakami, Makoto Ashikawa, Shirō Sano, Sei Hiraizumi
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