Screened as part of NZIFF 2013

Outrage Beyond 2012

Autoreiji Biyondo

Directed by Kitano Takeshi

A welcome return to form for Kitano Takeshi, Japan’s deadpan maestro of yakuza payback. “Extremely satisfying... Ultra-sparse, tough as nails, and wavering between droll and laugh-out-loud funny.” — Cinema Scope

Japan In Japanese with English subtitles
112 minutes 35mm / CinemaScope

Director, Screenplay, Editor

Producers

Mori Masayuki
,
Yoshida Takio

Photography

Yanagijima Katsumi

Production designer

Isoda Norihiro

Costume designers

Kurosawa Kazuko
,
Yamamoto Yohji

Music

Suzuki Keiichi

With

Beat Takeshi (Otomo)
,
Nishida Toshiyuki (Underboss Nishino)
,
Miura Tomokazu (Chairman Kato)
,
Kase Ryo (Underboss Ishihara)
,
Nakano Hideo (Kimura)
,
Matsushige Yutaka (Detective Shigeta)
,
Kohinata Fumiyo (Detective Kataoka)
,
Takahashi Katsunori (Jo)
,
Kiritani Kenta (Ono)
,
Arai Hirofumi (Shima)
,
Shiomi Sansei (Nakata)
,
Nakao Akira (Tomita)
,
Koyama Shigeru (Chairman Fuse)

Festivals

Venice, Toronto, New York 2012

Elsewhere

Outrage Beyond marks a welcome return to form for Kitano Takeshi, Japan’s deadpan maestro of yakuza payback. Reviving characters from his 2010 Outrage, the plot of corporate-like gang war manipulated by a power-bent cop may actually make more sense if you don’t remember what happened in the first film. Kitano taps the menace in nervous anxiety with a connoisseur’s precision and relishes the comedy in giveaway flashes of testerical emotion. Postponing his own appearance until you’re good and ready for it, Kitano (who bills his acting self as Beat Takeshi) plays a gratifyingly leading role in the mayhem of betrayal and innovative score-settling. A baseball-pitching machine makes a memorable addition to the vocabulary of retribution.

“Unlike younger directors who make gang movies the way they make music videos, pounding from moment to moment, Kitano understands pacing and structure, character and mood... The actors seem to be thoroughly enjoying themselves, playing their bad-ass characters to the hilt, mostly without falling into wretched excess. It’s as though Kitano gave them a license to be cool, instead of the far more usual (in Japanese films at least) nice…

Now that the yakuza genre in its classic forms has almost vanished from the theaters, it was refreshing for this hard-core fan to see a film that understands its disreputable pleasures – and knows how to provide them. Striding out of the screening room, I felt cooler myself.” — Mark Schilling, Japan Times