Just perfect...

Absolutely the worst movie.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

OUTRAGE marks the first Beat Takeshi Yakuza film from the writer/director/star in a decade, ever since the exemplary BROTHER. The good news is that OUTRAGE is a mini-masterpiece of a Yakuza film, with a classic tit-for-tat plot, some outrageously gory moments, and a real verve and drive to it that makes for unmissable viewing. Be warned: this is very grisly stuff indeed, and it may well be the goriest Yakuza film I've yet to watch.The plot is familiar stuff about a feuding Yakuza family and how the feud begins with small scale stuff before building into a full-blown massacre. The production values are exemplary: this is beautifully-shot stuff in which even the gore and bloodshed is handled in an attractive way. The performances are all very good, not least from the brooding auteur himself, and the ending is extremely downbeat and pessimistic rather than the usual gung-ho stuff we see in the movies. A sequel, BEYOND OUTRAGE, followed.

This movie is an exceptional framework for how a gangster movie should be composed: the characters are interesting; you are guessing throughout the entire movie what will happen next; the movie moves along and a very engaging pace - you are never really bored. Even the scenes of violence are interesting and memorable. It is a complex story yet avoids being confusing. All of the characters are balanced against each other while advancing toward the common goal of advancing in the yakuza system.People who rate this movie less than 7 out of 10 stars just don't get it and probably need to watch it a few more times to pick up on the subtleties of the relationships between the characters.This really is a masterpiece and it's one of the few movies I would actually buy on DVD. I hope to see more from Kitano someday in the near future.

I sat down to watch this film knowing that it would be violent and stylishly directed, because I know the director's work. I did not expect it to make me laugh out loud. But the opening, with the yakuza in their black suits and in their black Mercedes trying so hard to pretend to be something they are not (respectable businessmen) was downright funny. I knew right away that this would not be a glorification of organized crime (as so many yakuza movies are.) The mobsters in this one are stupid, greedy, vile tempered. The ending was completely predictable, if you paid attention, and it was strangely satisfying. Not sure why a sequel is coming out.

Sanno-Kai is a powerful yakuza organization with a hierarchical structure of several mutually subordinate clans. Head of Organization, Sekiuchi (Soichiro Kitamura), is dissatisfied with the closeness of his assistant chief Ikemoto (Jun Kunimura) with rival clan of Murase (Renji Ishibashi). Since Ikemoto's clan made a brotherly agreement with Murase's clan, he engages Otomo (Takeshi Kitano) to create a conflict that will eliminate doubts of Sekuichi. Otomo is the head of the family subordinated to Ikemoto, but delegated task to rough Murase gang members up a bit takes over-zealously. This act will ignite bloody spiral of inevitable revenge, sadistic violence and dirty power struggle between the clans, with the head of the organization in the heart of the conflict...The versatile Japanese director Takeshi Kitano has built a worldwide reputation in the nineties recording impressive auteur films about the yakuzas. After he shot the film Brother (2000), he left the genre inspired by the Japanese underworld, and devoted himself to film work on a series of art-drama, exploring the theme of intimate and spiritual significance. With movie Outrage (Autoreiji, 2010) he has closed the full circle of different genre preoccupations and returned to the territory of yakuza clan films. But loyal Kitano audience is likely to be disappointed by the realization of the director's return to the genre: the title of the new film is also its program. Outrage is reduced to the naked and brutal retaliatory clashes and struggle for power and the corresponding territory.Recognizable stylistic origins of earlier Kitano's genre works are in Outrage almost entirely abandoned. In this movie we do not come across the hardened criminals with a humanistic line, ready to dispose of weapons and far away from everyday underground enjoy relaxation in the infantile pastime. World of meditative yakuza characters filled with elegiac lyric is replaced in Outrage with world of one-dimensional techno-gangsters filled with blood of unstoppable brutality. Slow poetics of existential doubt is substituted with the stereotypical characteristic of gangster genre - ruthless struggle for power and money.The narrative of Outrage is told through the tangled web of secret treaties, broken promises, betrayed loyalties, conspiratorial intrigue, fierce revenge and blatant treason, and is constantly escalating in brutal skirmishes. Compliance with the order and hierarchy is nothing but a mere illusion, practice of cutting fingers has lost the value of ritual apology and the only thing left is the cyclical violence in which each execution surpasses the previous. Moreover, the motif of constant violence is repeated until it reaches the final boundaries of the absurd. In an effort that the routine of execution do not become boringly monotone, movie visual aesthetic of violence is presented in an extremely juicy graphics and the borders of creativity are examined in the methods of many executions. Painful cries resound from the use of handguns, crowbars, scalpels, dental drills and innovative combination of rope and luxury sedan. The only element that saves the movie from its classification in the exploitation genre is the intelligent use of black humor, to the extent that the movie is at times transformed into a comic farce, and even unintentional slapstick, especially when the character of African diplomat is in the focus.Takeshi Kitano has returned to the genre of yakuza movies after ten years but without any artistic pretensions. Outrage is a dynamic movie showing successive executions sometimes garnished with black humor, which can provide greater commercial success, but also bring disappointment to many of director fans. New Kitano movie is one-adrenaline entertainment and nothing more, unfortunately.