Outrage Coda

[Lalo Scalf]

Fiveyears after the all-out war between the Sanno and Hanabishi crime families, former yakuza boss Otomo works in South Korea for Mr. Chang, a noted fixer. When tensions rise between Chang and the Hanabishi, and Chang's life is endangered, Otomo returns to Japan to settle things once and for all.

Kitano taking the plunge towards pure cathartic destruction. No redemption possible on the outmoded notions of honor his Otomo represents, just empty suits doing power plays while he offers hollow retribution. Not quite as funny as the last one, but even more bitter. The Outrage movies represent Kitano at his full decadentist mode, but his form remains sharp as ever. A lot of comedy of gangster manners from the early movies remains in the setup scenes and Kitano can still kill people with the formal efficiency of a Keaton.

With this great ending of the outrage trilogy, Kitano shows once again his special way of making yakuza movies: the intricate plottings really are descendent of the best battles without honor and humanity films but the detached look at killing is all his own. The ending didn't seem fitting though and this prevented the film to have one more half-star. Like Nathan Stuart I too noticed the homage to Hokuriku Proxy War. Hope Takeshi won't stop churning yakuza films and who knows, being older, he may return in a powerful Oyabun role in the future...

Closing movie of this year's Venice Film Festival. A solid ending to the trilogy, feeling more like a spiritual successor of Sonatine in more ways than one. By now you know what to expect from these movies: huge cast of characters, Takeshi stealing every scene he is in, sudden violence, humor, and bleak endings.

Takeshi's anger is so fucking hard here, it feels like at all times he's about to come out of the screen and just beat the living shit out of me. Love how they just hammer in how truly fucking empty all the vengeance is.

Any just act you do is ultimately just for the business, even disconnect yourself completely from it all, the pieces were already in motion with or without you. So it's best just to try and do it as best you can for yourself, and then completely rid yourself of it all. Doesn't matter if you leave through a letter or through a bullet in the head. Just as long as you pulled your own trigger.

Nihilistic, savage, and an unrelenting showcase for the foibles and hubris of men in power, men grabbing for power, men attempting to escape] power, and men ineffectual in the face of power, Outrage Coda offers a protagonist completely subsumed by vengeance as more of an involuntary response than a vendetta motivated by emotional loss and therefore rings hollow and cold in the end.

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