EVERYONE'S CRAZY

Violent Cop was a good movie, I'm glad I surmounted all the obstacles that had stood in the way to watching it. First I had to go to the video store and get over my fear of dealing with anything German and official, i.e. getting a membership. Then I had to find a movie that had English subtitles, as most of the features in the "Asiatische Cinema" are in the original language with subtitles auf Deutsch. I rented Violent Cop and brought it home only to discover that my CD/DVD rom in my computer is having some serious issues and I can't watch DVDs on it. So I had to ask my roommate if I could watch it in his room, whatever. Finally I sit down to see this movie, and the subtitle track is horrendously incomplete. I can barely surmise what's going on, and what's more, the first half an hour or of the movie is more dialogue-ish then violent-cop-ish. So I was just about ready to turn it off when something really cool happens in the movie: Takeshi "Beat" Kitano is in a car with his partner, they've just run down a suspect that hit one of their cop buddies in the head with a baseball bat (cool gore) and Beat's partner thinks that they've killed the guy with their car, and is kind of pissed at Beat, concerned he's just gone all excessive force on this dude. Then Kitano grab's his partner's head and pulls him down as the criminal pops up with the bat and smashes the passenger side window. It's a shock similar to the scene in Godfather Part II when they try to assassinate
Michael Corleone. Anyhoozer from here on out the movie gets really good, the cinematography
really finds its footing, and I felt like even the subtitles improved. To think I was about to give up on this movie! There's a lot of "don't give up" going on in the film - it's full of awkwardly long cuts where Kitano is in some sort of willpower stand-off with his opponent whomever they may be, but the fact that it made me mildly uncomfortable was pleasing, if even the desired effect. The end of the film is so brutal it's kind of hard to see coming, if you make it that far it will be well worth your while. See it.