VIOLENT COP was his very first film.

For those familiar with Kitano's work, you should know that this is his bleakest and darkest film. It does have moments of humour here and there, but is mostly downbeat and cold. Boiling Point (1990), released a year later, would feature colourful sea-side settings and heaps of slapstick comedy alongside somewhat brutal murders and gang warfare. The same would apply to Sonatine (1993) and Hana-Bi (1998), generally more upbeat in tone.

When a tramp is beaten-up by a gang of vicious youths, he calmy waits in the shadows without intervening. He then trails one of the teenagers back to his mother's house and proceeds to slap him around and headbutt him violently. You could draw parallels with Dirty Harry here, but Azuma is far more sociopathic in his behavior.
His sister is mentally handicaped, and he takes her out from time to time to enjoy festivals and sea-side walks; this provides us with the very few moments of happiness and zen-like calm in the life of Azuma, as well as what could be considered the only redeeming side of his personality.

Although Tokyo is one of the safest places in the world right now, Kitano vision is one of darkened streets with glittering knifes, crowded streets that become a battlefield between cops and mobsters at any given time of the day. In fact, this is very realistic. If we look back at the early days of post-war Japan, yakuza were everywhere. This would lead many fights to the streets, in full view of mainstream Japanese society. Fast foward many decades later, and the Japanese economical meltdown would bring much opportunity for the yakuzas, leading to the semi-legitimization of organised crime, police corruption and the seizing of big corporations behind which the criminally-minded could hide. Based on this, I would say that the film takes place shorly after or during the economy bubble-burst. The film's vocabulary and overall look certainly reflect this idea in any case.

There are some extremely solid performances in this film; Kitano had already delivered a beautiful performance in Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (Nagisa Oshima, 1983). Ittoku Kishibe, Maiko Kawakami and Shiro Sano (fantastic actors) really help to give the film a sharp and sometimes frightening edge.

Violent Cop is a film for film-lovers, not for pop-corn munchers. I think this review has made that point rather clear.
If you are familiar with Kitano's work, then seek this out immediately.
If you are ready for a darkly violent but intelligent piece of yakuza film, then this might be the one for you.
People who appreciated Scorsese's Taxi Driver might want to check this out too.