Outrage

By Moira Sullivan

Takeshi Kitano, Japanese actor turned director, otherwise known as Beat Takeshi, brings us what he is best at – yakuza or Japanese organized crime films with all their blood and gore. Outrage was part of last year’s Cannes Film Festival’s official selection.

In what can be seen as a Japanese Reservoir Dogs, rival bosses with hidden body tattoos take turns at offing each other to impress the head family.  It seems like every second someone has their face bashed in, or their mouth worked on in the dentist office without Novocain. Takeshi Kitano is a deadpan actor that barely needs to move but instills fear with his cunning style. His motley face is enough to conjure up impending doom, along with the coiled snake energy of some of the other bosses in this film.

 Outrage is predictable but with enough gore to make any yakuza enthusiast satisfied. This is the kind of film that is screened late at night or dead in the middle of winter at film festivals when vicious violence seems to light up the screen and bring the spectator into a secret world of intrigue and cloak and dagger vengeance.

Takeshi Kitano returns with this yakuza tale after a decade absence from the genre. People missed him, and he’s back. He is known for serving up violence with impressive timing—but even after a 10-year vacation. It’s just a manner of who gets sliced and diced first. It is actually Kitano’s goal to make us feel pain.

The yakuza of this film hails back to the time when the bosses tried to control bars and pubs, but Kitano figures that today’s yakuza would be interested in an extortion and revenge scene in information technology.

Outrage gives us our fair share of knife plunging, gun firing adrenalin, all in a cool slick style.  It’s just a movie but Kitano makes you squirm every time there is an impending violent transaction between the bosses. There is no rest until the 90 minute ordeal is over.

© 2011 - Moira Sullivan - Air Date: 12/7/11  Movie Magazine International