OUTRAGE (Mongrel, 2010) D: Takeshi Kitano, w/ Kitano, Kippei Shiina. Rating: NNNN DVD package: none Rating: NNNN
There’s no hero here, and no gangster romanticism. Director and star Takeshi Kitano is more interested in unsettling the viewer than in providing the cozy comforts of exhilarating rise and pseudo-tragic fall.
Pay close attention to who’s in which gang or you’ll have no idea who’s betraying, beating, humiliating and killing whom.
Yakuza big boss Sekiuchi, of the Sannokai gang, is angry that subsidiary mob Ikemoto is dealing dope with the unaffiliated Murase crew. The Ikemoto head orders his crew, helmed by Otomo (Kitano), to arrange a pretend dispute between Ikemoto and Murase. But pretend turns real, and violence and betrayal spread.
As director, Kitano places his cast in sterile environments and makes the violence fast and casual. As an actor, he gives Otomo an inward gaze that suggests indifference more than stoicism.
EXTRAS Widescreen. Japanese audio. English, French subtitles.
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