These sequences illustrate Kitano's method of shifting between engagement and detachment, and his resolve to confound our own sense of anticipation. Kitano invites his audience's will ful surrender to the experiences and the uncommon depth of feeling his movies are predicated on. Sonatine doesn't encourage a straight reading, where logic dictates meaning and importance. When our normal responses are broken down, we relate more directly to the film. A director like John Woo will use violence to express his characters' inner conflicts, but Kitano designs violent, horrifying images to explore their emotional aftermath.
Suicide is also a recurring theme.
It's the culmination not of sorrow or despair or a political statement against state oppression but the logical conclusion of the warrior code. Significantly Sonatine , released here under Quentin Tarantino's Miramax imprint, Rolling Thunder, was made before Kitano's near fatal August 1994 motorcycle accident, which rendered the right side of his face partially paralyzed. His performance here is both more animated and expressive than in Fireworks . There's also a far more explicit sense of personal failure and vulnerability. Sonatine lacks the concentration and intensity of Fireworks , but it anticipates the later film.