Before long, Ken and his friends get into trouble with a small-time drug lord, and Yamamoto swings into action, applying a lifetime’s experience as a yakuza to LA’s crime underworld. Within weeks, Yamamoto, Ken and Denny have staked out a significant piece of criminal turf, and eventually go on to forge an uneasy alliance with Shirase (Masaya Kato), the young crime lord of Little Tokyo. Finally, the yakuza come into conflict with the Mafia, and Yamamoto recognises that an all-out war and almost certain annihilation are the only honourable option open to them. In so doing, he discovers that his black ‘brother’ is closer to him than the real sibling he had come to LA to find.

“In Japan,” says Kitano, “the sworn brotherhood of the yakuza is described as being ‘thicker than the blood of kindred brothers’. As you’ll see in Brother, sometimes brotherhood between certain men can actually be stronger than between actual brothers.”

Kitano had been wanting to make a film in Los Angeles for some time, and had linked up with British producer Jeremy Thomas - with whom he had worked on Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, in which Kitano played a key role - in 1997. “The greatest challenge,” says Thomas, “was to arrange the filming in America similar to the way Kitano was used to working in Japan.”

Omar Epps (with Kitano, above)

Part of the solution was for Kitano to bring his regular heads of department and crew members with him - the so-called ‘Kitano gumi’ (Kitano Crew), most of whom he has worked with since he began directing films with Violent Cop in 1989. But the foreign elements didn’t turn out to be nearly as daunting as Kitano had feared. “I had heard for years that American crews don’t work hard and that they loaf around all day, eating on the set,” he chuckles. “As it turned out, once we started shooting, the Americans worked even harder than the Japanese. I was really impressed.”

Kitano was equally impressed with his lead American actor, Omar Epps, who managed the not inconsiderable feat of portraying an authentic homeboy who has the sense of yakuza-style honour Kitano wanted. This was especially true of the final scene. “The sun was setting and I was afraid that I only had time for one take,” recalls the director. “Omar gave a particularly splendid performance: he not only ad-libbed superbly, but also delivered those lines in such a way that the essence of the film itself was condensed into this scene. His performance proves his utter skills as an actor.”

Epps, seen most recently in The Wood and Love and Basketball, returns the compliment. “Kitano is always on the money,” he says. “His vision offers something fresh: it’s young urban culture crossed with traditional Japanese culture. There’s this incredible anticipation in the film of ‘what will happen next?’ that is very cool.”

Cool is, of course, the essence of Kitano, and Brother is a very cool movie (as well as being funny, disturbing and at times extremely violent). But it is, says the writer/director/star/editor, all in the preparation.

“It’s like the philosophy of Japanese cuisine,” he says. “If you fumble with the raw materials too much, the smell of your hands gets into the food and makes it stale. Many things in life are like that. It’s often best to shoot simply and get to the point right away.”