Outrage (Takeshi Kitano, 2010)
I've been looking forward to this for a long time. It's Kitano's first film following his extremely odd "surrealist autobiographical" trilogy, and his return to the Yakuza film for the first time in 10 years. I had high hopes that this would be a serious return-to-form for Kitano, and rejoice, it is!
What
Outrage actually reminded me most of is a modern day
The Yakuza Papers. And that's certainly not a bad thing! The story is similarly intricate, following a huge cast of characters and complex relationships and manipulations between several yakuza families. Also similarly, it can be a bit hard to follow for these reasons. But although it definitely required some effort put into it, I thought the story was compelling, and the characters are great.
And it's
very well made. Perhaps you can imagine how exciting a Kitano-styled
Yakuza Papers would be for me.
There's some wonderful cinematography, and the man hasn't lost his touch on depicting violence. I could've done with a bit
more of that Kitano flare though. It's certainly there, and I loved it, but I also felt like this was, overall, a bit more generic feeling than Kitano's best. Perhaps he was over-compensating to make this mainstream-friendly after his last three films? Anyways, I still enjoyed it a lot, so I'm a happy camper.