O Ultraje

First of all if you're gonna complain about too much violence in a gangster movie. Go watch something like " Sesame street ". This movie has top class acting from almost everybody. Story is excellent and really shows how the big yakuza bosses play mind games all along. My favourite scene of the movie is in that noodle shop where a random customer will find something floating in his bowl of noodles =). If u wanna see a really cool and awesome yakuza movie, this should be it. I can not wait for the second part of this movie. It's suppose to come out anytime in 2012. I am a huge huge fan of the movie " Brother " and another epic Japanese yakuza movie called " Agitator ". If you liked those movies, you will simply love this movie too. give it a shot. 2 thumbs up

A very well-executed movie in terms of directing and acting, and it's a decent watch for anyone who enjoys a good mafia movie, or a yakuza movie as the case may be. However, there is nothing new on display. It blends in with the masses and masses of movies in its genre.

Throughout the entire movie, I kept feeling a sense of lack. This lack was a lack of sympathy you feel for these characters, and the lack of understanding for the system on display. You don't understand what's going on until about an hour into the movie, and by then it's a little too late to care. There's a little too much shooting first, and too few questions asked. I believe Kitano really tried to write a movie that could stand among classics like Scarface and the Godfather in terms of epics, but fell short.

However, I would say the movie is worth a watch, if only to see what the movie could've been.

Viewed at the Festival du Film, Cannes 2010

Takeshi Kitano's return to his familiar stamping ground, the Yakuza, their intrigues, vendettas and highly inventive ways of inflicting extreme unpleasantness on one another, was given less than a stellar welcome by critics at the Festival. A common refrain was that there was nothing new on offer here, no new insights, just a retread of the familiar. Well, they are right, but is that really such a bad thing?

I say no, not when we get tough guys, sharp suits, black humour, extreme violence (you might never want to visit the dentist again), a convoluted plot that is hard to follow but has something to do with rivalry, inheriting the reins of power and inflicting extreme violence on the other team. Oh yes, there's also betrayal and extreme violence.

Outrage is old-school Takeshi Kitano, a (for me) welcome return to his glory days, not that he ever left them behind (I've time for all his films, if not his gameshows). If you like the man, as actor or director, then you won't be disappointed by this film, just as long as you are not expecting something new and different, that is.

Kitano, who has left the personal, lyrical and poetic quality behind, now emerges as a filmmaker reaching out to the mainstream. Outrage is the start of his second Yakuza trilogy (Outrage 2 has been announced for next year), and plays out on a Shakespearean stage with the epic quality of Dostoyevsky. Unlike his first trilogy (Violent Cop, Boiling Point and Sonatine), this movie focuses on the politics of the yakuza rather than an intimate portrait of a compromised individual.

There are random acts of extreme violence that continue to propel the plot forward. Kitano, playing the underboss Otomo, is a similar role to his other characters in yakuza movies which portray out of control individuals that have a minor standing yet have the last word at the end of the play. Rather than focusing on the beauty of mobsters hiding out on the beach, this is a gritty, urban drama much in the tradition of Johnnie To's triad movies (Election) that has dominated the organized crime dramas over the past decade.

In showing the criminality of the human mind, it evokes Mario Bava's study in Rabid Dogs, similarly Kitano is building a Brechtian inspired drama about the harsh existential life. Kitano continues to explain and further define his worldview through the character of a doomed nihilist anti-hero. In all of Kitano's yakuza character studies, there is no hope, or redemption, only a further plunge into an ugly existence of lies and deceit, where only an act of violence can bring about change.

As Kitano remarked publicly about his making of Outrage, he is giving the people what they want - no pretense of artistic embellishments, but rather blunt, cruel acts of violence of the professional criminal devoid of any romanticism. One scene in particular evokes The Godfather, but that is where the similarities end - there is nothing glamorous about the yakuza lifestyle.

In this film, Kitano assumes the duties as in his other yakuza films as that of star, director, editor and writer. The vision is completely his own. The pacing is deliberately slow, showing that the life of a criminal is not particularly exciting but rather mundane as that of any other type of businessman, mostly involving allegiances of convenience and acts of betrayal. There is no illumination or redemption here, no course of action will lead to a better life, such is the basic tenet of a nihilist.

There is little flourish in the direction such as to immerse the viewer into the dark, banal existence of its characters. The one scene that brings a sense of relief with sunlight streaming through the trees on a backstreet, is colored darkly by seemingly innocent activity that is actually quite sinister for the individuals involved.

This is a welcome and long overdue return for Kitano to the yakuza genre which he abandoned a decade ago for a trilogy of felliniesque introspective autobiographical films. There are no experimental sequences or absurdist imagery as in his previous films. As a consequence, Kitano is no longer held back with meditative musings, instead giving the viewer an unfiltered take on the corruption, lies, and phony existence of the individual in an artificial society - that any person in any social situation is merely part of an inauthentic social contract.

In many ways, the lack of artistic pretense in Outrage only serves to further embolden the bleak message that Kitano has for us. This is not a film for the weak of heart, nor is it one for the impatient, it is a slow revelation revealing the emptiness of life and the pointlessness of all action.

Outrage is the film that many fans of director Kitano Takeshi (and, no doubt, his investors) have been clamoring for ever since he embarked on his art-house odyssey with 2002's Dolls. The ensuing years' films ranged from introspective (Takeshis) to wacky (Kantoku Banzai!), and brought him critical acclaim but not much success at the box office. Outrage is clearly designed to please fans of Takeshi's earlier films, such as Sonatine or Violent Cop: hard-boiled gangster films taking places in the shadowy world of Japan's yakuza.

The plot revolves around an internal power struggle within an established yakuza family: a fairly standard trope in gangster films in the East and West. Building on this frame Takeshi piles on a number of events, the sequence characterized by the sort of surreally disconnected quality that I associate with his films. It's difficult to follow causality from one event to the next, and in many cases they seem to operate as interesting vignettes loosely connected through the overarching plot. Some are blackly humorous, some are brutally violent, most are characterized by lots of yelling and cursing in the sort of coarse Japanese that's really difficult for non-native speakers to get. Luckily the plot is simple enough to follow, but I do wonder about missing out on some of the finer details...

The characters are filled out only in broad strokes, and most of the standard types are represented: the godfather-like boss, the loyal lieutenant, the conniving underling, the dundering muscle and so on. Takeshi gets generally excellent performances out of the cast, who manage to come off as sincere and spontaneous. He mentioned in a recent television interview that he shoots most of his scenes in only one or two takes, and the film feels fresh. There's some very good talent here, mostly genre actors but good ones. You develop sympathy for a lot of them by the film's end, which is a mark in its favor.

One of the things I really enjoyed about the film was Takeshi's camera-work, which remains sharp and eye-pleasing as ever. He makes effective use of wide-angle close-ups, and does some great riffs off of Coppola in several scenes. Long pans and still shots are also used well. One that really sticks out in my memory from the beginning of the film is a low, outside shot of a line of black cars, just the rear quarter panels, lined up one after the other traveling down the road. It's an odd shot, but serenely beautiful and effective at conveying a sense of the power and menace of the men inside.

On the minus side, the plot really is simplistic and predictable. Not to the extent of boredom, but once you understand the setup it's not at all hard to imagine how things are bound to turn out. Also, I thought the film felt, on the whole, a bit too clean. The cars in every scene are immaculately polished, every actor is decked out in a neatly arranged designer suit, and every set has all of its props in a neatly prescribed arrangement. It presents a somewhat dystopic, but ultimately whitewashed view of yakuza society that would feel retrograde in a Western gangster film.

Overall, it's nice to see a new yakuza film come out of Takeshi's shop, hallmarked with the same sort of black humor, extreme violence and artistic flair that we've come to expect from this perennial festival honoree. I would, however, have liked to see a bit more of how his intervening films might have affected this genre. Outrage is a good yakuza film, but doesn't do much (enough?) to step outside of its element.