Tokyo Yakuza veteran Murakawa (Kitano) is instructed to temporarily
relocate his clan to Okinawa to help settle a dispute between two rival
mafia factions. Although initially suspicious, he complies – but
eventually it becomes apparent that that he has been set-up, to divert
his attention from his lucrative territory in Tokyo. Faced with the
daunting prospect of his own extinction as well as that of his gang,
Murakawa plans revenge. Delivered at an unusually ponderous pace yet
punctuated with extreme violence, Sonatine is more a study of a
mid-life malaise than a gangster thriller, and contains early echoes
of the stark nihilism of Kitano’s later masterpiece Hana-Bi.
