Though my favorite genre is not gangster films, I haven’t shied away from them. While my enjoyment seems subdued, I have indeed cared enough to watch a good number of gangster movies. Perhaps now that I think about it, I have always been a fan of monster and horror movies and that hasn’t changed.
As a child, I remember watching KPLR-TV, Channel 11 in St. Louis. There were so many Warner Brother’s movie premieres during the weekends that they even had Bogart Theatre on Sunday afternoons just for the sake of his movies.
Many of my childhood memories involve watching gangster movies, and dhow I found the Public Enemy and Little Caesar movies. There also was a time I watched White Heat and High Sierra, these paired with my favorite new wave of the 80’s and 90’s gangster movies. More recently I took interest in the French gangster and caper movies from the 60s and 70s. Not only do I appreciate these films but I also think of Johnny Hallyday as an amazing actor. It’s almost a psychic ability the way French people perfect the art of giving off cynical and world weary vibes, but the Japanese may perhaps do it even better.
This leads me to Outrage: The Way of the Yakuza, which is written, directed, and acted in by Takeshi ‘Beat’ Kitano, who is a master craftsman of yakuza films in Japan. He has made quite a few. This is one of the many films he made after a long break from the genre due to several unsuccessful films. Outrage is his 15th film as a director.
Kitano has made some incredibly eccentric films with the yakuza theme. Sonatina has a strong action element but it is very different from the rest of the genre. It has a very long, slow middle segment where Kitano and his team are in exile and waiting for action to take place. Violence, in the form of actions rather than blunt gore, occurs off-screen. The big showdown is the final battle. In Brother, Kitano presented his equally fine yakuza character, a hitman exiled to America, who instead of idly waiting for Wheel of Fortune decided to try to control the local home boys and turn them into a money driven dangerous gang, despite his very poor understanding of English.
I will remember Beat as the other Sergeant Major in the ‘Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence’, a rather outlandish Anglo Japanese film about a prisoner of war, and the officer overseeing the contest in the film ‘Battle Royale’. Beat is a tragedy-faced actor, observation one would expect, but alas, he is one of the curious sad-faced actors. He suffered a stroke a few years ago, so I’ve been told, and as a result, the skin around the right side of his face hangs down a little, which accentuates the sadness. Strangely, he is a famous comedian in Japan who is always on the verge of explaining how poorly his content works in the United States.
This finally brings me to the shocking, Outrage. Outrage is the most brutal, sad, depressing, yet dark-visioned gangster movie I have ever seen. This is quite an achievement considering how depressing most of Beat’s work is. Attempting to detail the ‘plot’ would prove pointless. Michael himself confessed that he came up with the murders first, and then constructed a ‘story’ around them.
As expected, the film kicks off at a yakuza funeral, where one of the members is warned against teaming up with a member from a different crime syndicate. He is then guided to step in and claim a slice of that family’s pie which leads to a series of betrayal and double crosses. At some stage, I found it difficult to keep track of the total number of self-confirmed assassinations due to the staggering amount of 35 deceased, gunned down, Japanese actors that hit the floor.
Perhaps this is the film where Beat finally turns away from the yakuza genre for good. I can’t understand how the entire project managed to lose passion as well as character motivation. So, ‘A’ and ‘B’ are not merely interchangeable; they all seem to be bored with gangster life. There is none of the merriment found in the likes of Goodfellas or even Miller’s Crossing. These dudes never appear to relish the company of a woman or even good liquor, drugs or gambling. No, strike that. There is a long casino gambling scene, but everyone seems to take it so seriously that they fail to understand how much fun is supposed to be had with it, And, of course, if a yakuza gambles in his own house, he’s guaranteed to win every time. No, these guys reminded me of the speech Al Pacino has in Donnie Bracco, when the hammer is cocked it is not your worst enemy who blows you away or the cops, it is your best friend.
The characters in the movie are devoid of any sympathetic traits, as they backstab and attempt to kill each other for what little violence the movie portrays. There is very little humor incorporated into the film. The only noteworthy attempt at humor included an African diplomat that gets blackmailed into working for the yakuza. He speaks perfect English to other gangsters, and only the audience seems to understand what is being said. Some of this humor could have improved the movie drastically.
From the Buddhist perspective, these guys never seem to escape from the Hell and Hunger state because they are elated to take advantage of anyone weaker than them, yet become timid around stronger individuals. The most pathetic part is to see how Beat’s character tries begging ‘The Chairman’, who is the most powerful member of the crime family, and depends on him for everything.
I started to wonder why anybody would want to be a yakuza? Your career arc looks to be roughly 20 minutes in this movie! It so stringently gory that I do not even know where to begin. You might call it dull being a ‘salaryman,’ however those fellows (and women) will at the very least not have their heads blown off right outside their entrance.
It is that brutal and sadistic in nature. There is one exhausting scene that has a particular gangster with a dental appointment. Beat and the goonies walk into the dentists, snatch the drill, and utterly destroy the patient’s mouth and teeth. Later, Beat does the ultimate job in the steam chamber.
Funnily enough, I had the chance to speak to some other Japanese people (through my experience with Buddhist culture), and they let me in on a pretty amusing secret: the yakuza are super easy to locate and make an appearance in yellow pages with their own websites! I have a feeling that the yakuza lifestyle is not really corroded like this movie paints it to be, which is exactly why I would highly recommend avoiding it.
I don’t even know if this is a movie I can recommend seeing. It is beautifully shot, well acted (even if the actors have little to work with), and Beat Takeshi in himself is very interesting. Regardless, Outrage left me depressed and drained and, I must say, it takes a low budget film to do that!
Magnolia’s DVD (under the Magnet label) comes with a lot of features, an 18 minute cast interview, a 36 minute behind the scenes documentary, 13 minute cast panel interview, 23 minute world premiere Q&A interview, and a 9 minute interview from the Cannes premiere carpet. That is a lot of information discussing a movie which is one long body count. Public Beat is much more lively and seems to enjoy meeting his fans. At the Cannes premiere, he has to be escorted from his fans and told to stop signing autographs! Looks like there will be other US and international trailers too, as well as six trailers for other Magnet releases. Magnolia/Magnet is an interesting distributor of mostly independent and foreign films. All the previews on this disc look incredible.
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