When “Fireworks” set off, well, fireworks at the Venice Film Festival way back in 1997, the audacious, brutal, and beautiful film introduced the world to its auteur — “Beat Takeshi” Kitano.
Since taking home the Golden Lion in 1997, Kitano’s won acclaim (or at least knowing chuckles and points at the screen) for his role in the cult classic “Battle Royale,” as well as for his glowering about in Nagisa Oshima’s period melodrama/thriller “Taboo.” As a director, Kitano’s own period action movie “Zatoichi” won considerable praise, including a cluster of awards at Venice ’04, but “In competition” at Cannes in 1999, his slice-of-life drama “Kikujiro” was soundly panned.
This year, he returns to the Cannes “In competition” pool with his latest, “Outrage,” an ostensibly straight-up genre piece concerning yakuza members blowing each other to slow-motion smithereens — per the trailer — a return to a genre he hasn’t explicitly explored since 2000’s “Brothers.”Kitano stars (natch), as does “Letters from Iwo Jima’s” Ryo Kase, and lots of cool, silent poses are likely struck.
Considering Kitano’s previous film (the wacky screwball comedy/tragedy “Achilles and the Tortoise”) has yet to find domestic distribution and was largely dismissed by critics when it played Toronto last year, is this a return to form or a further disappointment? The critics weigh in below.
According to both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, return-to-form it is:
Rob Nelson (Variety) observes that “While erstwhile king of yakuza epics Takeshi Kitano doesn’t try to do much new in “Outrage” … the results are so visually stunning, why quibble?” Nelson goes on to admit that the “philosophical explorations of violence and its consequences, distinguishing features of Kitano’s ’90s work in the yakuza genre, are essentially nowhere to be found here,” but that “the director’s control over the narrative is drum-tight.”
Maggie Lee (Hollywood Reporter) basically agrees, claiming that “Outrage” is “As violent, amoral and misanthropic as a Jacobean play.” In fact, she thinks it’s “arguably his best film in a decade.” Lee warns that “Commercially, the screenplay’s sprawling structure and absence of traditional, balletic showdowns might not satisfy mainstream appetites,” but reassures that “individual nerve-tingling scenes of violence will make the film reach beyond Kitano’s art house admirers to lovers of genre and noir films.”
Considerably less enthused is In Contention’s Guy Lodge, who gives the film 2 stars out of 4: “Takeshi Kitano’s more excitable fans may thrill to the director-star’s blood-saturated return to the yakuza genre, but more casual admirers will likely be left nonplussed by this thin, obstinately single-minded shoot ‘em up. Make that shoot/stab/sever/strangle/slice/garrotte ‘em up, given that Takeshi’s chief interest in this scarcely plotted film is finding ever more laborious, if frequently innovative, ways to slaughter any gangster standing between the middle-aged heavy (played by Takeshi himself) and … well, let’s just say that the journey appears to be the destination.” Ouch.
The Cannes Tweeters take Lodge’s side. Well, at least the majority of the ones we follow. See: the always entertaining James Rocchi for another dissenting opinion: “Outrage: Or, Takeshi Kitano’s Endless Series of Indistinguishable People Getting Shot. Blam-Blam-Blah.”
So, the trades and the tweets disagree? What does it all mean? And at this point in Kitano’s career, does anyone other than the constituents already on board truly care? Time will tell. Btw, here’s some clips from the film.