I've seen and admired his later movies, including Hana Bi and Dolls, but i wasn't quite sure what to expect when i got the DVD version of this. As you expect with Takeshi Kitano, its both mesmerizing and infuriating, always teetering on a tightrope with brilliance on one side and hopeless pretentiousness on the other.<br /><br />Its so difficult to penetrate a movie like this - it is slow, but carefully paced, with a peculiar editing pattern. Scenes are held for a few seconds more than most directors would hold, catching characters staring blankly at the aftermath of an action. Events occur with little or no warning or apparent reason. Characters are mostly blanks - either husks of men, or just empty psychopaths, its hard to say. The climax is shown obliquely, from a distance, we can only infer what is happening later.<br /><br />So, to put it mildly, this is not your average gangster movie. In some ways, it has suffered with the passage of time - we are now spoiled with such complex portrayals of gangsters such as in the Sopranos, we find it hard to accept Kitano's almost noble portrayal of what are in reality brutal, selfish sociopaths. Perhaps its the Japanese concept of people being pulled along by the tides of life, rather than actors in our own destinies that is the real theme of this and his other movies. But is this the excuse for the hero being a callous killer? We find ourselves sympathizing with his increasingly rotten soul, rather than empathizing with his victims.<br /><br />Love him or hate him, Kitano is one of the most interesting film makers in the world today, and Sonatine is one of his best - just expect to be scratching your head in puzzlement at the end.