by Ryan Macdonald

To close out my triple-double-feature, I sluggishly meandered down side streets, bypassing the Mercer exit construction and winding up at The Neptune Theater for my final film of the weekend, Autoreiji (Outrage).

NOTE: Just in case everyone didn’t know, the Neptune is being converted into a music venue. There’s not a lot of remodeling going on at the moment, but the theater chairs are gone, and they’ve brought in padded folding chairs. Not the worse I’ve sat on, but keep it in mind if the movie’s a long one.

Actor-turned-writer-turned-director Takeshi Kitano hasn’t been behind the camera much since The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi in 2003. Though his acting roots lie in comedy, his directorial debut was Violent Cop. The Yakuza gangster genre is what he’s best known for, so it’s fantastic to finally see him return to it in Outrage.

Outrage sounds like a typical yakuza title. You might expect a lot of bullets, severed pinkies, and the quintessential henchman out to regain his pride and take down the head of an evil family. But this isn’t the blood-drenched battle royal of Takashi Miike’s style. Nor is it the Hong Kong bullet opera of John Woo or more recently Johnnie To. In the days of uber-violent and technically flashy Asian cinema, Outrage is the wake up call.

It starts out very calm. Dozens of bored bodyguards in black suits hanging around a line of Mercedes. Inside the large compound, all the family bosses are having dinner and discussing business. Even without any direct dialog, Kitano shows us a hierarchy rooted in hundreds of years of feudal samurai honor. Everyone bows to the chairman. The underbosses bow to the bosses. The bodyguards bow to their respective bosses. We don’t need freeze frames with stylized fonts showing us who’s who. Three or four long, tempered shots take care of that.

The chairman pulls aside boss Ikemoto (Audition’s Jun Kunimura). He’s heard rumors that Ikemoto has been dealing with Murase (Audition’s Renji Ishibashi), a sleazy boss who mainly deals in drugs. He wants it to stop, or at least for the drugs to stop. Ikemoto assures him he will take care of it. The implication here is that it will be deal with in an honorable, professional manner. No such luck. Ikemoto immediately enlists Otomo (played by Kitano himself) to stir up some trouble with Murase. What follows is a Shakespearean tale of deception, honor, betrayal, and the ultimate futility of trying to hold on to the ways of yesterday.

You would think that the title, “Outrage” would refer to a specific offense, perhaps against the main character. Both this film’s largest fault and greatest accomplishment is the lack of a solid protagonist. To a certain extent, Otomo is our “hero”. But we don’t even focus on him enough. There’s no sequence of him and his wife at the dinner table. No bouncing a kid on his knee when he gets home from work. This entire film adheres to the old gangster adage: “It’s not personal. It’s business.” There is no one moment of ultimate wrong. For two hours, we watch the entire rank and file of the yakuza system tear itself apart. Everything is an outrage. This tradition of respecting everyone has, almost undetected, come apart at the seams. No one respects anyone. Even more, everyone seems to disrespect everyone at every possible moment. No hero. No villain. No winner. No loser.

You would be justified in a certain amount of skepticism at this point. Maybe you’re thinking that Kitano is pushing some socio-political message here. Crime doesn’t pay. Killing is wrong. The old ways are dead. Incorrect. Crime is paying everyone very well. The new ways are hollow shells of the past. And if Kitano’s doing it, killing is really, really cool.

As I said before, this isn’t the bullet opera of recent years. However, it is violent. And it is art. So I’m going to try and coin a new phrase. “Blood Fugue”. That’s a new thing, right? It better be. The reason I’m sticking with the classical music references is that this film plays musically, violence and all. Kitano’s direction and writing, Katsumi Yanagijima’s patient, purposeful camera work, Yoshinori Ohta’s mostly fluid editing, and even Keiichi Suzuki’s foreboding modern score come together like an orchestral composition. The adagio beginning, full of long, wide shots. The calculated, forceful accelerando of the second act blends lies, manipulation, and sadness at Otomo’s loss of identity in an ever changing yakuza world. This is all frequently punctuated by staccato violence that would make Eli Roth say, “Damn, why didn’t I think of that?” All leading up to an almost disappointingly realistic ending that finally gives reprieve from the madness while at the same time promising more.

That’s right folks. What we have here is number one of possibly the first major yakuza trilogy in recent memory. Outrage 2 is already in pre-production, and I can’t wait.

If this film had been made in the 1970’s, or even in the early ‘90’s, it would be an instant classic. Nowadays, films like this can come across as boring, pretentious, or just plain obsolete. But if you’re a true fan of cinema, Japanese film, and the gangster genre, Outrage is now required viewing.

Final Grade: A-

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