Outrage (2010)

Staring with 1989’s “Violent Cop”, the films of Takeshi Kitano have pretty much always been violent in some way, though with clever editing and cinematography, the violence hasn’t always been straight forward. But with “Outrage”, Kitano dived into the more conventional yakuza drama and the complex struggles for power and body counts they bring with them; and started a saga that has defined the last decade of his directorial career.

Otomo (Beat Takeshi) and his gang are part of the Ikemoto (Jun Kunimura) arm of their wider family network. Enjoying being an agitator within the organisation, he enjoys tormenting the Murase (Renji Ishibashi) arm of the family, which results in various incidents of infighting within the typically complex network.

Exploiting the Ghanaian Embassy, Otomo sets up a casino in a waterfront building, but their past misdemeanours catch-up with the crew, and one-by-one they are dispatched from within the family. But so is everybody else, as the yakuza are not happy until all internal competition is eliminated.

Much like the yakuza genre classics of the Seventies from Kinji Fukasaku, there are an awful lot of characters to keep up with and it is a challenge to keep up with who is on who’s side. This is, therefore, a lot of backstabbing and apologising to seniors, interspersed with acts of extreme violence. And to be fair to him, at a period when his skills seemed to either be waning or heading in bizarre directions, Kitano does a decent job of making it understandable; and with violence that has enough creativity and artistry to not become too boring.

In some ways, it could be seen as refreshing to see a top director take on a more conventional yakuza film: a genre that had largely run its course. Long-term cinematographer Katsumi Yanagijima provides some nice shots, particularly when Otomo and his number two Mizuno (Kippei Shina) are at their most menacing, adding a touch of imagination to the violence.

But there are also signs that there is a reason the yakuza film isn’t quite as popular as it has been in the past. Clichés are abundant, with a finger no longer seen as an adequate apology for misdeeds and the machinations within the power struggle. It starts off with the more mundane aspects of yakuza life in focus: a disturbance caused in a rival’s bar; the bland offices in which they spend large numbers of hours; visiting family heads in big, secure houses, but, as the body-count increases this can’t really be said to be a unique aspect of the film.

While the violence is artistically shot, you miss the cuts to the aftermath or the hits happening off-screen of his earlier films, that would add the comedic element that has worked so well in his Nineties work. “Outrage” is more straight-faced in its handling of this aspect, and so is a less joyful watch. And while this is a better effort than the more bizarre autobiographical trilogy that preceded it, it is in many ways a more conventional film with a more ordinary result.

This, in turn, sparked a trilogy of the like Fukasaku would have presided over, and is ultimately the fruit of Kitano’s latter career. But, sitting among Kitano’s least interesting films, one has to wonder if his career, or indeed cinema in general, really needed this yakuza reboot.