Sonatine

Brilliant, Funny, Poignant: Definitely not a John Woo Movie
A brilliant, highly stylistic deconstruction of the film noir genre. Those who are familiar with the yakuza movies, too, will appreciate just how much of a radical departure this is from the conventions of the genre. All the action takes place in the most incongruous places, the yakuza life is portrayed (highly realistically but hilariously) as long stretches of interminable boredom disrupted by totally uncontrollable bursts of violence, characters often stare directly into the camera completely ignoring the matching eyelines (a la Ozu Yasujiro). John Woo aficionados will be disappointed; don