17.05.12

Perhaps best known in the United States for his yakuza and cop movies, including the masterly “Sonatine” and “ Hana-bi ,” Mr. Kitano and his films resist easy genre categorization. He makes bloody, disgusting art films and poetic pulp fictions, and restlessly shifts between absurdity and seriousness. (His period samurai movie, “The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi,” ends with an exuberant clog dance shot like a Busby Berkeley extravaganza.) “Outrage,” set in the present, hews to a largely familiar gangster template, with degrees of bad (badder, baddest) men fighting in a war of all against all. Somewhat muted, it has few true surprises, which may be intentional because a familiarity with the yakuza, its rituals, violence and code helps make the ensuing narrative surprises pop.

Written, directed and edited by Mr. Kitano, the vertiginous story centers on the Sanno-kai crime organization, a hydra-headed, Tokyo-based syndicate led by a plump smiler in a Nehru jacket normally known only as Mr. Chairman (Soichiro Kitamura). The film opens at an isolated compound just as a meeting with the organization’s different clan bosses and underbosses is breaking up. One boss, Ikemoto (Jun Kunimura), while serving time in prison, has made a brotherly pact with an outsider, Murase (Renji Ishibashi). Warned against this alliance, Ikemoto turns to a subordinate clan boss, Otomo (Mr. Kitano, using his regular acting moniker, Beat Takeshi) to deal quietly with Murase, a betrayal — of Murase, of Otomo — that lights a fuse that sizzles, burns and blows this world to pieces.

Source: New York Times