Bill Gibron is a veteran film critic from Tampa, Florida.Kitano "Beat" Takeshi has always been a geek genre god. Between his work as a filmmaker, comedian, TV presenter, author, painter, and video game producer, he's cemented his legacy in two of Japan's most popular cinema genres -- the samurai film and the crime epic. Like Italy and the mafia, or America and its gang violence, the tiny island nation and its Yakuza have long been a recipe for internationally celebrated motion picture product. Over the last few years, Takeshi has forgone the tattooed mobsters in favor of a more diverse creative canon. With Outrage (also known as Autoreiji), he's back in familiar territory, and for all its post-modern moves, it remains a classic showcase for his obvious talents.
When a competing crime family oversteps its bounds, Sekiuchi (Kitamura Soichiro), boss of the Sannokai, issues a directive -- the Murase-gumi organization must be destroyed. He puts his right hand man Katô (Tomokazu Miura) in charge, and he in turn lets minor bosses Ikemoto (Jun Kunimura) and Ôtomo (Takeshi) in on it. The plotting begins. In the meantime, a member of the group is embarrassed at a rival establishment. Hoping to appease Sekiuchi (otherwise known as Mr. Chairman), they offer to return the money...and the misguided rival mobster's fingers. Thus begins a turf war where assassination and arrests lead to double crosses and more murders. In the end, Ôtomo is forced to choose between prison and playing out his final fatal hand. His decision, as expected, has dire consequences for everyone involved.
Slow and sizzling with occasional stabs of blood red violence, Outrage is a solid entertainment. As a matter of fact, Takeshi has always claimed that he didn't want to return to the Yakuza to make some serious cinematic statement. He just wanted to create something for the movie-going public to enjoy...and he has. Though it is really nothing more than a series of confrontations and retaliations, the core crystallizes everything the gangster archetype stands for -- loyalty, duty, brotherhood, obligation, risk, revenge, and the need to save face. The notion of public ridicule (or if not out in the open, among each other) runs deep in Outrage. It seems to be the main reason these otherwise complementary clans are at war.As a director, Takeshi understands shock value. A sequence inside a dentist's office is as gratuitous and gory as you'd expect. But there are other times when the sadism is more sedate, and the impact is still the same. Because he carefully sets up his characters and creates situations which underscore their motives, we feel the force of each gunshot, the pierce of each stab. While the actors all play it somber and sinister, Takeshi simply dives in and out of the issues. He circles his cast, creates space so that the inevitable power play has drama. We might not understand why "Mr. Chairman" is so hellbent on destroying those with whom he has a supposed truce, but it's clear that, for someone like Ôtomo, when it happens, you simply follow orders and clean up the trail of bodies.
There will be some who see what Takeshi is doing as slight. After all, he's not deconstructing religion and the neighborhood like Scorsese or referencing killers past like Tarantino. Instead, he dips into his country's long, sordid history with such scoundrels and then flawlessly applies the formula. What we get is something both familiar and fresh, recognizable in its designs and deceptive in its delivery. Outrage really doesn't redefine or reimagine the Yakuza crime effort. What it does do, however, is prove that no one does it better that "Beat" Takeshi. All others are just passable pretenders to his mighty throne.
