soundtrack was released in 1993 by Toshiba EMI, and later in France by Milan Records. "Sonatine I (Act of Violence)" "Light and Darkness" "Play on the Sands" "Rain After That" "On the Fullmoon of Mystery" "Into a Trance" "Sonatine II (In the Beginning)" "Magic Mushroom" "Eye Witness" "Runaway Trip" "Moebius Band" "Die Out of Memories" "See You..." "Sonatine III (Be Over)" Reception Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 88% of 25 professional critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 7.4 out of 10. Roger Ebert, who gave the film three and a half out of four stars, said it shows that gangster films do not need to have "stupid dialogue, nonstop action and gratuitous gore" and that it reminded him of Le Samouraï. The Guardians Rob Mackie called it "a largely peaceful, contemplative work, punctuated by moments of extreme violence" and gave it four out of five stars. Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club summed the movie up as "a fresh take on the age-old yakuza genre that's infused by odd flourishes of style and playfulness, and jarring outbursts of humor and violence." Complex named Sonatine second on their list of The 25 Best Yakuza Movies, behind only Battles Without Honor and Humanity. Jasper Sharp, writing for the British Film Institute, listed it as one of the 10 great Japanese gangster movies. Sonatine was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. French publisher and notorious movie-goer, Jean-Pierre Dionnet (Canal +/Studio Canal), reported in an interview, that someone convinced Alain Delon to watch Sonatine arguing that Kitano was a fan of Le Samouraï. Delon was taken aback, and talking about Kitano's acting, said "What's THAT? [...], this is not an actor [...], he only has three facial expressions and he almost doesn't talk on top of this." Most professionals around Dionnet had the same reaction, but the French publisher was both struck and puzzled by this new genre. He contacted the Japanese distributor in order to buy the license for Sonatine, but his request was rejected. Dionnet had to insist for several months to finally discover that the Shochiku didn't want to release Sonatine abroad, claiming the film was "too Japanese" and would not be accepted, nor understood, by western audiences. Eventually Dionnet learned that the distributor didn't want to release the license because of its commercial failure in