It won numerous awards and became one of Kitano's most successful and praised films, garnering him a sizable international fan base.

He finds that the dispute is insignificant; the group's temporary headquarters is bombed and his men are ambushed in a bar, leaving several of them dead.

Fleeing to the seaside, the survivors take refuge in a remote beach house belonging to the brother of one of the Nakamatsu members and decide to wait for the trouble to blow over.

Takahashi is killed and Murakawa sets off with the only survivor of the group, a member of the Nakamatsu clan, who helps him by rigging the electricity in the hotel to go off at a certain time.

Kitano said that when learning the piano, when the learner gets to sonatinas they have to decide where they want to go, whether it is to classical, jazz or popular music; marking the point of crucial decision making.

[7] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 73 out of 100, based on 22 critics, indicating "generaly favourable reviews".

[9] The Guardian's Rob Mackie called it "a largely peaceful, contemplative work, punctuated by moments of extreme violence" and gave it four out of five stars.

Club summed the movie up as "a fresh take on the age-old yakuza genre that's infused by odd flourishes of style and playfulness, and jarring outbursts of humor and violence.

[12] Jasper Sharp, writing for the British Film Institute, listed it as one of the ten great Japanese gangster movies.

Dionnet had to insist for several months to finally discover that Shochiku didn't want to release Sonatine abroad, claiming the film was "too Japanese" and would not be accepted, nor understood, by western audiences.

Dionnet had an agreement with Shochiku arguing that French audiences did not know Kitano's career and would accept his violent character more easily.

He bought Sonatine and three additional Kitano films, Violent Cop, Boiling Point and the latest, Kids Return.

As soon as 1995, Takeshi Kitano played the role of a yakuza in American director Robert Longo's SF thriller, Johnny Mnemonic.

In an interview, Kitano admitted he was not fully satisfied with the final result of Brother and that he regretted his "Hollywood" adventure which was supposed to bring him a broader audience with a higher exposure.