Takeshi Kitano is one of the greatest living legends of the Japanese film industry and has had an incomparable career. He started as a comedian on stage, moved to television, and then made a right turn into making ultra-violent gangster films. Outrage Beyond is the sequel to his last film Outrage (2010) exploring the inner working of the Yakuza (Japanese Mafia).
The Sanno crime family of Tokyo have risen to become the most feared and powerful family in Japan, to the point where even politicians are afraid to cross them. When a police detective is found dead in the bay the police are forced to crack down on the crime families and the Sanno family in particular. Lead investigator Kataoka decides rather than gather evidence and pursue the arrests of suspected individuals it might just be easier to orchestrate a war between the two largest crime families and have them kill each other. Kataoka decides to spring ex-gangster Ohtomo (Kitano) who ended the last film by being sent off to prison after being betrayed by what are now members of the Sanno crime family. Ohtomo is then paired with another disgruntled ex-gangster who was betrayed by the Sanno family and sent on a bloody mission of revenge.
A film with so many double crosses, shifts of allegiances, crooked cops and personal agendas requires a lot of exposition. It takes a lot of time to set up each and every characters motivation and this could be very confusing if not handled right. I found the first film to be very confusing and at many times I was wondering why did that guy kill him and wasn’t that guy on his side? Kitano seems to have fixed that problem here in the sequel by keeping the number of characters down and keeping their motivation fairly simple, revenge is always easy to understand. So much exposition could also be boring yet both films have a simple answer to that and the answer is moments of extreme violence. A film where two men take out their revenge on others requires a lot of shoot outs, torture and rivers of blood. That certainly jars the audience out of any boredom they may feel themselves settling into.
Outrage Beyond
Directed by: Takeshi Kitano
Starring: Beat Takeshi, Toshiyuki Nishida, Tomokazu Miura, Ryo Kase
http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/tiff/2012/outragebeyond
