The film that essentially started what the French would later come to classify as the film noir, during their alengthy appraisal of the cinema. Lang is a true auteur, mixing realism of the documentary aesthetic with extreme high and low-angle cinematography, with that of German Expressionism lighting, making use of shadow to reinforce the greater themes of paranoia and moral ambiguity.

Someone really needs to add Sonatine to the list of "FIlms on the Auteurs." It is his seminal work. It forever has a place in my constantly revolving top 10.