After 10 years of poetic arthouse lyricism (DOLLS), blind swordfighters (ZATOICHI) and a trilogy of self-demontage-comedies, Takeshi Kitano is back at the genre he loves and helped to re-create - the yakuza film!
With films like HANA-BI, BROTHER, SONATINE and BOILING POINT, Kitano can be billed the master of the japanese crime-drama. All of these films are precise, sensual portraits of men closer to death than life. Kitano once reported that out of the gang that he was a member of as a teenager, only 8 of the 10 are still alive. Maybe it is a cynical life view, maybe it's just realistic, but Kitano knows that almost no gangster will end up on the top, and those that do stand on the dead bodies of their former friends.
Hence OUTRAGE is a bitter and realistic story: because the "chairman" doesn't like an underboss, he asks another underboss to start a fight with him - for no apparent reason. Even though the two are friends, the gangster agrees, and what starts out as a small fight soon becomes a blood feud with dead bodies, dismembered fingers and drilled teeth everywhere. The various gangsters all see the downfall of their direct opponent as a chance to rise to the top, and so they quickly start to scheme who could be erased by whom, and who could be set up against which foe.
Even though the film doesn't add anything new to the genre, there's a lot of substance and entertainment in OUTRAGE. However, Kitano's newest feature is by far not as sensual or playful as his earlier film (maybe that is an attribute of the previous trilogy of hysterical comedy films), but the bleak realism of OUTRAGE never fails to entertain. In the end, the film might be another stepping stone to something else, something bigger and more glorious, but as of now, it proves that Kitano is still one of the best directors worldwide.
Rating - 9/10
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