Sword fighting in film is not about how good the fighter is, but how good the actor receiving the blows is.

Some of Kitano's earlier films are dramas about Yakuza gangsters or the police. It launched the Tokyo Filmex in 2000. ISBN 1-84457-166-1.

With the exception of his works as a film director he is known almost exclusively by the name Beat Takeshi (ビートたけし Bīto Takeshi?). The Japanese film critic Nagaharu Yodogawa once dubbed him "the true successor" to influential filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. In 2010 the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris held a one-man show displaying his paintings and installations.