20 Foreign Language Films You Must See Before You Die

2. Sonatine

Takeshi Kitano is perhaps best known to mainstream audiences for his cross-over movie Brother, in which he played a Yakuza gangster who heads to Los Angeles after a crippling defeat in a turf war. While Sonatine resides in the Yakuza thriller genre, it is an altogether more subtle and nuanced movie which demonstrates Kitano's keen eye for comedy and pathos.

Kitano plays Yakuza enforcer Murakawa, sent to Okinawa to mediate a turf dispute but forced to go into hiding after being double crossed. As the title implies, Sonatine follows the structure of a musical sonata, with a strong, dramatic opening "movement" and a bombastic conclusion. But it's the second act which Kitano uses to transcend the conventions of genre cinema - as the Yakuza hide out on a beach they revert to childhood, playing games on the sand and setting up pranks to stave off boredom. But the frivolity is something of a mask, and the violence of their profession - and Murakawa's increasing disillusionment with it - soon catches up. Few films deliver such unmatched moments of cinematic poetry.