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| | `Boiling Point': Death, Despair and Bad Manners |
 | | "Boiling Point" was made in 1990, well before Kitano won international renown for "Hana-Bi" ("Fireworks") and "Sonatine" and a year after he made his debut as a film director with "Violent Cop," which opened in New York last summer. |
 | | In "Boiling Point," Kitano, who calls himself Beat and is also an actor, stand-up comic, film editor, painter, poet, essayist, journalist, author, television personality and all-around tough guy, takes a baseball team as his metaphor for the old Japan of mannerly behavior, respect for authority and sublimation of self in favor of the general good. |
 | | Including a scene of a crude butcher-knife amputation of a finger joint in keeping with the yakuza code, "Boiling Point," like the smoother, sharper "Violent Cop," is not for the sensitive or squeamish, which is not to say that it is without its comic touches. |
| partners.nytimes.com /library/film/111999boiling-film-review.html (443 words) |
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