If you’ve seen one image of Kitano Takeshi, alternatively known by his comedic sobriquet “Beat” Takeshi, it’s likely this one: Takeshi in a white button-up shirt on a beautiful beach, smiling as he points a pistol to his head. Or maybe it’s of Takeshi costumed as a shogun, giving commentary as regular joes injure themselves in ridiculous obstacle courses on his seminal game show, Takeshi’s Castle. (Rebranded as MxC in the United States and given a creatively inaccurate English dub.)
Perhaps the most famous man in Japan, Takeshi contains multitudes. He’s been a talk-show host mainstay for both humorous and political shows for decades. His early comedy career was legendary. He even created one of the most infamous Nintendo games of all time, Takeshi’s Challenge.
But away from Japan, he’s best known for one thing: his career as a film director.
It’s an odd situation. Tell a Japanese person that you know Takeshi for his movies, and they’ll scratch their head in bemusement. Meanwhile, tell a French film buff that Takeshi is mostly a slapstick comedian who hosts cheap talk shows, and they’ll get up in arms at the insult to a true film auteur. There are very few international figures with such diverse reputations at home and abroad.
The multitudes of Beat Takeshi
Kitano Takeshi was born into a working-class family in Tokyo, growing up around local toughs and neighborhood gangsters. Following a series of coincidences, he found his calling in comedy, starting as part of the manzai standup duo Two-Beat in 1970s Asakusa. His comedy was risque and often punched down. He gained both controversy and major popularity once he made his way to TV.
By the 80s, he’d branched out to variety and game show hosting, as well as his first serious acting role in 1983’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence alongside David Bowie. Despite knowing almost nothing of film or acting, Takeshi was cast as a dark, violent character – but found that Japanese cinemagoing audiences would instinctively laugh when he appeared on screen. He devoted himself to serious, dark characters for the next ten years, and soon found himself directing films.
Something incredible about Takeshi’s movies is just how much his authorial stamp is present from film to film. He not only writes, directs, and stars in (most of) these movies – he even personally edits them. From his worst to his best, from his most quixotic to crowd-pleasing, his films are always his own.
Ben Sachs of the Chicago Reader explained some of what makes that Kitano Takeshi stamp so recognizable: “…[These are films] that recall silent-era cinema; writer-director Takeshi Kitano employs a deadpan visual style—rooted in long static takes and precise, linear camera movements—that might make you think of Buster Keaton.”
Takeshi also has a long run of films that benefited from a director-composer relationship with perhaps Japan’s most renowned soundtrack composer: Hisaishi Joe. Most famous as the creator of the soundtrack to every film for anime giant Miyazaki Hayao since 1984’s Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Hisaishi’s music for Takeshi eschews orchestral bombast and instead goes for 80s-style synthesized minimalism with a strong emotional punch.
Hisaishi was brought on board because his style, as heard in Miyazaki’s films, would foster a creatively arresting mismatch to Takeshi’s deadpan, often violent world. And yet, it works – and the eight scores Hisaishi produced for Takeshi are among his very best.
About this ranking
What’s contained in this ranking? While Takeshi is also known for appearances in major films like Battle Royale and even Hollywood fare like Johnny Neumonic and the live-action Ghost in the Shell, I’ll be narrowing my focus to his output as a film director. This means the films he helmed directly, 20 of which have been released as of this writing. At 78 years old, the man is still very much working. (Has anyone ever worked as much as Takeshi?) His most recent film, the streaming Broken Rage, actually premiered while I was in the midst of my watchthrough.
Friends and colleagues sat in on a few of Takeshi’s films for this little project. Variously, we had Jay Allen, founder of Unseen Japan and a fan of Takeshi from back in the 90s. Occasionally along for the ride was Jake Adelstein, known as the creator of Tokyo Vice, and who had a decade-long career as a vice-beat reporter in Japan and vast real-life experience as with Takeshi’s favorite subjects – the Japanese police and yakuza. Jake’s also someone who’s actually encountered Takeshi on a professional level multiple times – even appearing on one of his TV shows – which led to some insightful (and entertaining) color commentary.
I’ve been a fan of Takeshi’s idiosyncratic filmmaking since I was a freshman in high school and saw his 2003 Zatoichi in an art theater in Minneapolis. Even more influential for me was the two-film DVD pack of Zatoichi released by Rolling Thunder Pictures some time later; it contained Takeshi’s earlier yakuza film Sonatine, complete with intro by company founder Quentin Tarantino. Sonatine wasn’t just my entry point to Takeshi’s hard-boiled yakuza world, for which he’s best known, but was also the first yakuza film I saw, period. It was perhaps the first time I really became aware of the shadowy world of Japanese organized crime. I quickly got my hands on the other Kitano Takeshi films that one could access in the wilds of Minnesota in those days. That was about two other films.
Now, as a longtime Japan-based journalist and interpreter with a lot more direct experience with Takeshi’s favorite subjects of Japanese crime and the yakuza, as well as a belly full of Japanese cinema, I’ve embarked on a full watchthrough of his varied, amazing, frustrating, but rarely boring filmography. The films are all ranked below.
As a note: Unlike my previous series ranking the entire Studio Ghibli Universe, where almost all the core films range from great to masterpieces, Takeshi’s filmography has a lot more variation in terms of quality. Even his most ardent fans tend to separate his eras, and have at least a few of his films that they have a hard time enjoying. Takeshi can seem to make films primarily for himself, and that can come at the exclusion of the enjoyment of his general audience. Still, there’s much worth going through here – and some true masterpieces down the line – so sit back, put on your most dead-eyed yakuza expression, and get ready to enjoy the complete ranked filmography of Kitano “Beat” Takeshi.
#20: Getting Any? (1995)
みんな～やってるか！
Look, every list has to have its low point. And Getting Any? – when it’s acknowledged at all – is almost universally regarded as Takeshi’s biggest dud. Does that mean it’s completely worthless? Well…
Going into the film, you should keep one thing in mind: this is 100% a gag film. It’s a series of jokey setpieces and sight gags with only the smallest thread of connective tissue: a charisma-free protagonist (actor Dankan, futilely trying his best) on a search for ways to pick up girls. His greatest ambition at the start of the film is to find a way to have “ca-sekkusu.” But this film is so structureless that even that obsession is soon cast to the wayside, as his focus shifts to obtaining a gun and using it to get rich quick.
After directing four serious films, all meeting with some fanfare abroad but a whimper at home in Japan, Getting Any? is essentially Takeshi’s attempt to return to his slapstick roots; it’s more like a feature-length version of a ten-minute Japanese comedy sketch than an actual film. An understandable desire from the famed comedian “Beat” Takeshi, but sadly, much of this humor will not work for audiences today. In fact, I’m pretty sure it didn’t work back in 1995.
A reason the film is especially difficult to engage with today is how it treats women as items – not just within the protagonist’s adolescent mindset, but the world of the film as a whole. Takeshi is supposedly satirizing the overly-direct, sex-obsessed mind of 90s-era Japanese youth, but the satire doesn’t go far enough, and mostly just starts us off on the wrong foot. It’s enough to make certain sections of the audience hate this film from the get-go.
A painful watch that ends as literally sh*t
The movie is full of innumerable references and spoofs, from recreations of a particularly famous robbery case from the 1950s, to Japanese monster movies, to Takeshi’s gangster-focused film career (including a Penn and Teller-looking yakuza boss who really outstays his welcome). In one scene set in a movie studio, we even get a jocular take on the famous cinematic blind swordsman, Zatoichi, nearly a decade before Takeshi would play the character himself in a vastly more serious film.
At best, a few of these gags are mildly funny. Alas, the movie quickly starts to lose steam, overstaying its welcome within a mere half an hour. (Although the gags must have been funnier on set – you can visibly see background actors start to break during scenes.)
Takeshi has a real talent when it comes to short-form slapstick. In his own movies, however, his best humor tends to be found in wry observations and sudden shocking moments. But here, his slapstick, scatological jokes, and reference gags just go on and on, lacking any proper punchline. The “humor” becomes interminable. Takeshi’s long takes and slow, slice-of-life pace, so apt for his more serious films, are applied to gags worthy of perhaps a chuckle or two. It’s a poor combination. And the musical and visual cues just serve to remind you of better, funnier movies. (Little surprise this is the only Takeshi film from this era to have a non-Hisaishi Joe score.)
The whole thing lands with a limp, scatological splat. Getting Any? has a particularly drawn-out, anticlimactic ending that ups the silliness but not the laughs. Even as a fan of Takeshi’s films, I’m not sure I’d have watched through this whole thing if not for this project.
Tragically, this is one turd that’s especially hard to polish.
#19: Takeshis’ (2005)
Separated by ten years, the two films coming in at the bottom (or, as presented in this order, top) of my list seem to echo each other.
Fresh off his biggest-ever film hit, Zatoichi, Takeshi made a sharp turn away from anything akin to that accessible samurai blockbuster. Instead, he began work on half a decade’s worth of self-referential, surrealist autobiography in film form. A decade earlier, the critical success of Sonatine had resulted in Takeshi turning away from the very type of film that won him plaudits by making the lambasted comedy Getting Any?. Here, the pattern repeats itself.
Success seems to drive Kitano Takeshi to make inward-looking films that appear mostly to exist for his own enjoyment or self-actualization. Admittedly, Takeshis’ starts off as more watchable than the execrable Getting Any?, but before long falls down a well of boring abstraction.
The beginning offers something in the way of insight into Takeshi’s life as an actor and media figure. Here, Takeshi is playing himself. We see his daily interactions inside the ordered, fluorescent-lit interiors of Japanese TV studios; the deferential way people around Takeshi treat this big star, and the harsher tone applied when his back is turned. A focus seems to be on the surreality of fame. Doppelgangers begin to emerge; every person in Takeshi’s fame-adjacent orbit seems to have a double (played by the same actor) in the workaday world. Both sides of the mirror are populated with Takeshi regulars, from Susumu Terajima to Osugi Ren to Watanabe Tetsu.
Intrigue me once, shame on you
Sadly, the film gets much less interesting once the focus switches from film-star Takeshi to failing journeyman “Kitano.” While this part is more surreal, it’s also just less enjoyable. Once we pivot to this sad-sack version of Takeshi, dreaming of the star he could be, things steadily devolve into unexciting fantasy. The film loses track of the themes the first section seemed to be building towards. The focus shifts from fame to a sort of yakuza gun-slinger power fantasy; more about the fantasies of Takeshi’s films, rather than the appeal of being a major star like Takeshi. Whether a film star or a gun-toting bank robber, though, people always want something from the powerful.
Takeshis’ is saved from being quite as dire as Getting Any?! by dint of being a little more atmospheric in its surrealism; Getting Any? is plenty surreal, too, but in a vain attempt at getting laughs. Takeshis’ is a bit more of a mood piece, which isn’t as frustrating as bad comedy.
That’s not to say that it’s especially interesting to watch. Eventually, Takeshis’ devolves into disconnected surreal imagery and dance numbers with only the vaguest connection to the film’s “plot,” such that it is. Supposedly, this is all an attempt at filming in dreamlike fractals; layers of dreams upon dreams. Still, at this point, it’s hard to feel anything but disappointment at what this movie could have been instead.
At 107 minutes, this is one of Takeshi’s shorter films. You could’ve fooled me. Takeshis’ doesn’t exactly fill one with excitement at the prospect of two more self-referential autobiographical films in a row.
#18: Glory to the Filmmaker! (2007)
監督·ばんざい!
Ready or not, we’re back at it again with Takeshi’s trilogy of absurd self-referentialist film autobiographies. This time, we’ve arrived at 2007’s Glory to the Filmmaker! That title was amusing enough that the Venice Film Festival named a lifetime achievement-type award after the film. (In 2006, Takeshi became the first director to receive the Glory to the Filmmaker award upon screening this movie at the festival.) But can the movie itself live up to its title?
The plot – and not for the first time, I use that word very, very lightly – is that Takeshi, once again playing a version of himself, is in search of a new film to revitalize his directorial career. Having promised to stay away from his tired yakuza tropes, he instead embarks on a series of genre pictures, each failing to reach completion or gain the foreign or domestic accolades he desires. This basic framework, which we mostly understand via narration, is just an excuse for a series of parody sequences. Things devolve from there. It’s sporadically pretty funny.
Film styles parodied include the straight-on domestic 1950s black-and-white drama of Ozu Yasujiro (one of Japan’s most celebrated directors); a few good jokes are drawn from how poorly cast Takeshi is within these contexts. (An omnipresent narrator explains matter-of-factly that Takeshi’s direction “lacks class” compared to Ozu’s, and that Takeshi looks more like an “illiterate laborer” than a relatable everyman.) We get a smattering of mildly amusing, hackneyed romance film set-ups, and Takeshi’s take on the post-war nostalgia of Yamazaki Takashi’s Always: Sunset on Third Street (2005).
The first twenty minutes or so of the film prime you to expect the gag-heavy parodies of Takeshi’s much-earlier Getting Any?, the film this one is most often compared to. (A return to that painfully unfunny style of filmmaking isn’t likely to entice many to watch Glory, sadly.)
Strangely, though, the Sunset on Third Street riff plays itself mostly straight. Takeshi plays what feels like a version of his own father here: a cruel workaday drunk who beats his wife. The narrator eventually pipes in that post-war squalor and poverty are darker than Takeshi’s usual yakuza violence. Then, the section unceremoniously ends.
In Which I May Have Cinematic Stockholm Syndrome
What I can say for Glory to the Filmmaker! is that it’s less obnoxious than Takeshi’s previous straight comedy flicks. If you know a fair bit about Japanese genre films, you may have some fun with this. Sadly, it’s only a bit, with each segment lacking much in the way of punchline or payoff. Said parody is extremely light. Rather than a skewering of genre tropes, these feel like only slightly exaggerated versions of standard genre fare. As for Takeshi’s self-parody, this is another film that gives some insight into Takeshi’s viewpoint, even if his own presence in the film is as a cipher. (The purposeful nature of this is made clear by the constant motif of Takeshi being accompanied by or transforming into a literal plaster doll stand-in.)
Much like both Getting Any? and Takeshis‘, the back half of the film really devolves; here, the structural excuse of a director trying his hand at different film styles gives way to randomness with little rhyme or reason.
Notable stars show up to do their best with the material; Emori Tōru (the voice of Gin from Kon Satoshi’s Tokyo Godfathers) lends his deft physical comedy chops and gravely voice with some aplomb. Meanwhile, Kishimoto Kayako and Suzuki Anna play a pair of strange women implied to be aliens born from a pair of asteroids. At this point, the movie has fully lost the plot, but I have to admit to finding the sheer randomness of this section relatively entertaining. Certainly, more of the gags land than in Getting Any?.
It may well be that I’m suffering from some sort of Stockholm syndrome here. Or maybe I set my expectations just low enough, expecting another obnoxious comedy slog. But for once, the randomness sort of worked for me. I was chuckling at a number of the gags – which is more than I can say for Takeshi’s other comparable comedy films. Not enough to recommend this to anyone other than Takeshi diehards, but at least I’m not upset that I own the Blu-ray for Glory to the Filmmaker!
Glory to the Director’s Viewpoint
Takeshi explained the production for the film in an interview with Sanspo:
“Each film was shot and edited like a regular production, and I added the punchlines at the stage where we were adding narration afterwards. It’s much like manzai.”
He also said he felt foreign critics misunderstood the true Kitano Takeshi, overappreciating his serious films. “This type of thing is on a different strata of quality. They should recognize this sort of idiotic movie. It’s weird that they rank them so low. This is just like Kurosawa’s ‘Ikiru.'” [2]
Sorry, Takeshi – Glory to the Filmmaker! still isn’t making it very far up this ranked list. But in this case, at least, I sort of get what you were going for.
#17: Achilles and the Tortoise (2008)
アキレスと亀
Well, at least we can say each of these three films improved on the previous entry.
Despite being considered part of the same self-reflexive trilogy as Takeshis’ and Glory to the Filmmaker, Achilles and the Tortoise feels like something very different. This is mostly because Achilles actually functions as a movie. (Well, mostly.) After the two previous celluloid fever dreams, Achilles is surprisingly straightforward, with an actual narrative. It’s only in the back half that it takes on any of the full-blown weirdness of the other films in this “trilogy.”
Uniquely for a Takeshi film, Achilles starts in anime form. This animated scene directly explains the titular “Achilles and the Tortoise” parable, a famous paradox created by pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea sometime in the 4th century BC.
The paradox posits that in a race between the swift warrior Achilles and a tortoise, Achilles can never catch up, despite his efforts and greater speed – as long as his shelled opponent is given a head start. This is because, in the time Achilles takes to bridge the gap, the tortoise will have made some slight forward progress, thus requiring Achilles to further close the now smaller gap – ad infinitum.
It’s not that hard to grasp the paradox’s connection to this film’s themes. Achilles is about a boy, Machisu, born into a wealthy post-war family, whose sole purpose in life is to create art. Despite great early promise, personal tragedies prevent him from easily entering into the exclusive world of high art. He traverses the decades to the modern day, never giving up on his passion, always one step behind admission into the echelons of the art world he so strives for.
Takeshi on the art beat
Takeshi brings his own experience in the art world to bear with Achilles. Not content with being one of Japan’s top comedians and an international indie film darling, Takeshi has, since the time of a near-fatal motorcycle accident in the 90s, been an active painter. Up to this point, his work has appeared in numerous of his films (both prominently and in the background). Achilles is elevated by Takeshi’s paintings, which have the same striking naivety as when they first appeared in 1997’s Hana-bi.
It’s clear, though, that Takeshi has found the art industry to be a hypocritical and dishonest space. When the Paris-based Fondation Cartier Pour ’art Contemporain featured Takeshi’s art in 2010, he stated that “with this exhibition, I was attempting to expand the definition of ‘art,’ to make it less conventional, less snobby, more casual and accessible to everyone.” In Achilles, which premiered two years before that exhibit, Takeshi makes his opinion on the snobbiness and capital-derived world of art known quite clearly via his character’s struggles.
Contrasting tones of beige
For most of its runtime, this is a strangely sentimental film. It’s certainly Takeshi’s most sentimental since 1999’s Kikujiro (the closest he ever got to making a children’s film), although it never reaches the same heights. The actor chosen to play the protagonist as a child gives the sort of nondescript performance that really makes you appreciate the naturalism of Masao, the child protagonist of Kikujiro.
Comparatively, Achilles has a TV movie of the week feel. Visually, its color grading feels cheap, and the only real flair is found in Takeshi’s featured art pieces. Aurally, it’s easy to imagine how a score by Hisaishi Joe would have elevated the somewhat maudlin aspects of the story – sadly, the basic sonic wallpaper here just serves to add a cheap emotionality. (I was shocked to see that the score was provided by Kajiura Yuki – creator of the amazing soundtracks for such anime as Noir and .Hack//Sign.)
It’s only in the last third of the film, when Kitano himself finally subs in as the aged protagonist, that the film takes on a more “Takeshi” feel. As Machisu struggles to find artistic success, we get a series of gag sequences of the artist trying more gimmicky and dangerous ways to stick out. A movie that was mostly serious suddenly becomes a bit more focused on silly, sardonic humor, all commenting darkly on the industry of high art. It doesn’t quite match up with the tone of the earlier parts of the film, but it’s mostly fun, and presents some interesting commentary.
Still, Achilles and the Tortoise is overlong, and really loses track of itself in its last twenty minutes or so. With a bit of a trim and a little more restraint towards the end, this could have been a fairly easy recommendation. As it stands, though, it’s watchable, and has something interesting to say about creation and the false dichotomies of high art. It’s also a welcome reprise from the two non-movies that came before it.
#16: Outrage Coda (2017)
アウトレイジ 最終章
I’d hazard that Outrage Coda – the final in Takeshi’s late-stage yakuza trilogy – has, since its release, been the Takeshi film I’ve been least interested in. This is in large part due to its strangely cheap-looking theatrical poster; this thing really screams “thrown together in Photoshop.” Takeshi looks especially rough on the cover. For the first time, he’s truly looking aged here – going from old-but-tough to “should he really still be working as a yakuza grunt?” (This is something his film Broken Rage would mine for comedy eight years later.) I was also a bit mystified as to why this basic-seeming series would really need three films; no other Takeshi movie even has a sequel.
So, I’m happy to report that Outrage Coda is actually pretty enjoyable. Does it justify its own existence? I suppose so, since it does build on the other two films. Still, you’ll get more out of it if you’ve been following the convoluted saga of the Hanabishi vs. Sanno yakuza family war found in the previous entries.
For most of the runtime, the movie lacks the sort of lethargy you’d expect from a late-stage second sequel. Like the second film, it’s more straightforward than the first Outrage, with fewer plot meanderings. It’s a mostly easy-to-follow slow burn of internecine yakuza plotting, followed by shoot-outs. The cast is a mix of returning and new grunting, gesticulating yakuza-types; the late Nishida Toshiyuki plays his central role with special viciousness.
Talking in coda
The third Outrage film continues the series’ penchant for showing the internationalized nature of organized crime in Japan. Here, the focus really shines on the Japan-Korea connection. The matter-of-fact transnational interactions help set the series apart and add some real interest. I can say that Coda handles this the best out of the three films.
Sadly, the movie does lose some steam after a certain over-the-top shootout. From this point on, things shuffle towards an ending with a bit of thud, and more than a few Takeshi-isms. For those looking for gross-out violence, there’s less here as well. With Coda‘s weaker ending and the first film’s uneven nature, it’s a bit hard to say which is better.
There’s not too much more to say about Outrage Coda; it’s a serviceable end to a mostly serviceable trilogy. Takeshi succeeded in making a mainstream, successful yakuza series that still feels like it comes from his unique viewpoint. As a whole, Outrage is better than I expected.
#15: Broken Rage (2024)
The most recent Kitano Takeshi film, as of this writing, Broken Rage, is a departure in many ways. For one thing, it’s Takeshi’s first streaming film, with its major release having taken place on Amazon Prime. It’s also his shortest film, at only a few minutes past a single hour – more like a long streaming episode than a two-hour-plus epic like his previous film, Kubi. It also has a novel structure, such that even explaining the format of the movie is something of a spoiler.
Really, Broken Rage is a knowing, cheeky summation of Takeshi’s career – especially his late-stage career. It’s about an aged yakuza hitman carrying out seemingly perfect kills on gangster toughs; or is it? In the film, Takeshi pulls most directly from his Outrage series (something the title “Broken Rage” clearly references), but then switches up midstream.
Takeshi has been visibly aging for more than two decades now, with even his Zatoichi from 2003 feeling a tiny bit over-the-hill. Broken Rage turns the suspension of disbelief that a 77-year-old Takeshi could be the ultimate hitman on its head. The movie starts out painfully bog-standard, like a cheaper version of the already not-so-deep Outrage – but soon comes to resemble Glory to the Filmmaker!-era Takeshi more than Outrage-era Takeshi.
Age matters not
Thankfully, Broken Rage is more on point than any of the mid-2000s Takeshi comedies, and most thankfully of all, is short enough to justify itself. I had a good enough time with it when I reviewed the film after it first came out. Now, returning to it after having watched every single one of Takeshi’s 20 films, there’s more to chuckle at. Especially relevant is having the Outrage movies, with all their positive and negative qualities, fresh on my mind.
This is a movie that contains both Takeshis: “Beat” and “Kitano.” Being a fan of both sides of the director/comedian will make this a more enjoyable time. And as an experiment in film structure, I can at least say this is an interestingly off-kilter outing that really is something different.
I went into more detail regarding Broken Rage‘s themes (such as they are) in my full review when the film came out; you can read that here. But, in short, this is a slight, but intruigingly weird and ultimately fun, outing to cap Takeshi’s current directorial run.
#14: Outrage (2010)
アウトレイジ
In 2010, almost ten years to the day since his previous gangster pic (2000’s Brother), Takeshi at last made his return to the yakuza genre. Besides Zatoichi, he’d made a decade’s worth of movies running as far from his hardboiled filmic roots as he could, including films directly mocking his own career choices and stereotyping.
With Outrage, he suddenly reversed course, and three out of his next four films would be hyper-violent gangster films meant to satisfy his audience at home and abroad. (The fourth film would be a yakuza film, too, just more focused on comedy.)
The plot of Outrage doesn’t really need describing. Needless to say, it’s about ten police lineups’ worth of gangsters scheming to off one another. It descends into your classic battle of yakuza grunts and snarls.
The violence is more visceral, if less artsy, than Takeshi’s 90s classics. It goes a bit overboard, with the yakuza threatening an ambassador from a very made-up African country. (Embassy of “Gbanan?” It’s a bit hard to take the movie seriously after that… or so I thought, until Jake Adelstein pointed out to me that this was based on a real case involving the yakuza and a foreign embassy! But that’s a story for another article…)
Still, scenes of all-powerful yakuza able to abuse ambassadors and police are a bit funny to see when you know real yakuza history. The Japanese underworld was only a year away from receiving a near-death-blow from Japanese contract law that’s seen their numbers dip by some 80%.
Back to the blood-filled well
The movie does have an interesting international feeling thanks to this, though. It also doesn’t shy away from the multinational ties of the yakuza, including their historical web of Iranian drug peddlers and English-speaking underbosses. Sadly, the awkwardly delivered English-language dialogue brings down the intimidation factor. (As does some less-than-convincing acting in general.)
Scenes of yakuza blackmailing civilians are similar to those in director Itami Juzo’s superior anti-yakuza film The Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion. The rest of the movie is mostly just scenes of violence, with mid-level gangsters torturing and beating other yakuza and associates. Still, there is some of the old Takeshi humor and style, like when a host from a scummy yakuza-run hostess club inadvertently tries to scam a client he doesn’t realize is also a yakuza. There’s also a bit of Takeshi’s knowing naturalism; a hitman taking off his shoes before climbing a bathroom sink in order to shoot a grunt hiding in the bathroom stall.
Despite being a big Kitano Takeshi fan, I’d never watched this trilogy prior to this project. I think that’s because the promotional material for the Outrage series always made it look a bit… generic, I suppose, for Takeshi fare.
I’m happy to report that the first film at least has some of Takeshi’s classic trademarks – restrained pacing, a dry sense of humor, and sudden bursts of violence. The ending is a bright spot, helping to elevate the movie a bit by revealing just how cyclical all the power-structure jostling has been. (It’s a little undercut by knowing that there’s two sequels to come, though.)
For the most part, though, Outrage does end up feeling a bit generic, with little in terms of character or scenario to latch on to. It just becomes a series of scenes of violence, some shocking and impactful, some boring. It’s watchable, but I can’t help feeling that it’s a shadow of Takeshi’s former yakuza filmography. Thankfully, the next film managed to make things a bit more interesting.
Next, the ranking continues with films #13 – #7, and things heat up as we move into Takeshi’s more beloved films!
Part 2 is available here.
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Sources
[1] Phillips, Keith. (August 11, 2004.) Takeshi Kitano. The AV Club.
[2] ２００７年０３月２２日. たけし監督１３作目は漫才を映画化「バカな映画も認めるべき」. Sanspo.com. Sourced from Waybackmachine.
[3] “”Beat” Takeshi: The Hollywood Flashback Interview”. thehollywoodinterview.blogspot.com. 26 July 2008.
