Brother

Aniki Yamamoto is a Tokyo yakuza whose gang has been destroyed in a war with a rival clan. With a price on his head and his position in Japan gone, he leaves for Los Angeles to find his younger half-brother Ken, whose studies he had been financing. He arrives speaking no English, into a city whose criminal underworld he does not understand.

He finds that Ken has become a low-level drug dealer working for a supplier named Denny. When Yamamoto intervenes in a dispute on his brother's behalf, he moves into the local drug trade himself, applying the yakuza methods and codes of honor he knows, and gradually assembles his own crew. The ways of Japanese organized crime clash with the more mercenary habits of the American dealers around him.

Takeshi Kitano directed, wrote and stars in the film, his eighth as director and the one between Kikujiro and Zatoichi. He leads a cast that also includes Omar Epps, Claude Maki, Susumu Terajima, Masaya Kato and Royale Watkins. The production, mounted with British, Japanese, American and French backing, cost about twelve million dollars and returned roughly fifteen million worldwide. On IMDb, viewers rate it 7.1 from about 26,000 votes, and on TMDB it holds 7.1 from around 544 votes; the critics' score stands lower, at 5.9 from 74 reviews.