Title: Beyond Outrage (AKA Outrage Beyond)
Directed by: Takeshi Kitano
Starring: Takeshi Kitano, Toshiyuki Nishida, Tomokazu Miura, Fumiyo Kohinata
Running time: 112 minutes, Rated R, Available now on VOD/iTunes – In theaters 01/03/14
The anticipated sequel to Outrage. The police have organized a crackdown of the two major Yakuza crime sydicates – the Sanno and Hanabishi. Detective Kataoka (Fumiyo Kohinata) proposes an early prison realase of Otomo (Takeshi Kitano), a former Yakuza. Kataoka hopes that Otomo will seek out revenge from being forced to serve time and take out the bosses of both syndicates. His plan works and both syndicates are forced to unite. How far will Otomo take his revenge?
I didn’t see the first film, and after having to sit through this one I’m not really looking forward to the planned 3rd. It’s in Japanese, so I was reading the whole time and the majority of the film has long, heavy scenes of dialogue. I was half expecting Takeshi Kitano to be the next Charles Bronson or Dirty Harry type, which is a fair comparison, but where’s the action? The first half hour of the film is the set up and then every 20 minutes or more after that is when some action finally happens, and when it does it’s a brief let down. If you watch the trailer, they’ve condensed all of the thrilling parts of the film into just over 2 minutes.
The scene where the guy gets tied up in front of a pitching machine was cool and I could totally see some American director stealing borrowing the scene for their own. While I enjoyed Takeshi Kitano’s flat expressionless acting because it made his character effectively badass, the action scenes were too few to hold my interest.
Total Rating: D
Reviewed by: JM Willis
