Violent Cop
1989 film by Takeshi Kitano
Violent Cop (その男、凶暴につき, Sono Otoko, Kyōbō Ni Tsuki; lit. 'That Man, Being Violent') is a 1989 Japanese neo-noir action thriller film directed by Takeshi Kitano, written by Kitano and Hisashi Nozawa, and starring Kitano, Maiko Kawakami, Makoto Ashikawa, Hakuryu, Ken Yoshizawa, and Ittoku Kishibe. It follows Azuma, a Japanese police detective known for his rough and unprofessional conduct, after he is assigned to investigate drug trafficking by the yakuza. It was Kitano's directorial debut, and marked the beginning of his career as a filmmaker. Takeshi Kitano rewrote most of the film's original screenplay by Hisashi Nozawa.
Plot
Azuma is a police detective who lives with his intellectually disabled sister Akari (of whom he is very protective) and has a gambling problem that forces him to constantly borrow money. He also has a strong sense of morality and a reputation for using excessive violence when dealing with criminals, ignoring police rules and regulations when they become inconvenient; for instance, after witnessing a gang of teenage boys beat up a homeless man for fun, he enters the home of the gang's leader and beats him before making him promise to turn himself and his friends in, which he does the next day. Azuma's superiors, who admire him for his ability to get results, overlook his constant violations of the police code by making him write "apologies" whenever he does something unlawful.
Azuma and his new partner Kikuchi are assigned to investigate the murder of a drug dealer, and break up an attempted drug deal in the bathroom of a nightclub. The seller, who works for yakuza boss Nito, names Azuma's close friend Iwaki, a vice squad detective, as his supplier. Azuma is subsequently asked to help find Iwaki, who has seemingly gone into hiding due to newspapers uncovering his ties to the yakuza, but a fisherman finds Iwaki's corpse hanging from a noose under a bridge.
The public source identifies “Violent Cop” as 1989 film by Takeshi Kitano. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Violent, film and Takeshi.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1156893. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1989.
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This entry incorporates text from “Violent Cop” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.