Outrage

With Outrage, Takeshi Kitano has made a hard hitting and brutal portrait of the Japanese Yakuza. Opposed to other films in the same genre, it's not so much about the Yakuza against the police or the young, up-and-coming gangster. Instead Kitano invites us on the inside of the hard core and gives us the Yakuza as seen from the inside. Kitano himself plays one of the films major parts, as the brutal leader of a smaller family, looking for more power. But, where other Yakuza films is content with blood and violence, Kitano takes the whole genre a step further and portraits an intense struggle of power between the families. In a battle like this, turning against your own will lead to extreme consequences. In familiar Kitano style, not everyone will survive the film. However, where some of his Japanese colleagues take the violence to the extreme, Kitano gives us no more than must be expected in a Yakuza film. On its own, Outrage is a brutal film. Together with its sequel Outrage Beyond, it is the beginning of what looks to be an exceptionally strong Yakuza trilogy.