It was as if Kitano had realized the most visceral shots were those left on the cutting room floor and proceeded to fashion those early projects on an iceberg principle: prodding one to imagine the bloodletting without ever displaying it in full. The director enjoyed trading in tantalizing elisions, and his most gruesome scenes would often leave the action offscreen, offering a set-up and aftermath while cutting the most dramatic moments––an approach that would become more frequent after A Scene at the Sea (1991), the first feature he’d edit himself. Violence was an omnipresent fixture of his first crime capers––from Violent Cop (1989) to Fireworks (1997)––but it unfolded in hiccups. For all their grisly mayhem, the earliest films by Takeshi Kitano all demonstrated a keen grasp of negation.
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