When Murakawa/ Beat Takeshi puts the gun to his head and pulls the trigger, he displays a wholly anomalous grin, which, to his underlings, proces more frightening or disturbing than the act itself. 

Elena del Rio, The Grace of Destruction

The face of Beat Takeshi, playing Murakawa, transcends the category of realism … [His] grin is like some sort of existentially alien substance that expresses the sheer anomality of Murakawa's flirtation with death…. On a superficial level, it seems that Takeshi is merely 'wearing' this grin…. His grin has a strange intensity, as if to dispel any meaning in excess of the grin itself…. it is nothing beyond a grin, transcending the viewer's ability to judge whether it is merely a shallow grin or a laugh from the depths of Murakawa's existence that has heretofore simply been suppressed.

Casio Abe, Beat Takeshi vs Takeshi Kitano