I was a big fan of Takeshi Kitano’s blood soaked yakuza film Outrage and I was happy to hear that he wanted to make a sequel, possibly even turn Outrage into a trilogy. While Japan got to see the follow-up film Beyond Outrage at the end of 2012, we’ve had to wait until the first week of 2014 (in theaters) to see if the crime drama was a worthy sequel to the badass original.
In Beyond Outrage, the Sanno crime family has grown drastically in power and size, turning the family into a near political power that’s being run be young executives with a new view of how the family should be run, frustrating the old-guard members in the process. As a result of this growth in power, the police have decided to crack down on organized crime and one detective Kataoka (Fumiyo Kohinata) decides to try and start a war between the Sanno and Hanabishi crime families in order to get rid of people without having to make arrests.
While his scumbag and illegal efforts to start a war seem futile, he decides to use Otomo (Kitano), the former boss of a family that was destroyed by the Sanno and who was suspected of being dead, in order to ignite the spark and start this hopeful war through his constant manipulation and false rumors.
Beyond Outrage is a pretty slow moving movie and one that doesn’t reach the same gangster masterpiece greatness that the first one reaches. That being said, the movie is still pretty damn cool and while some might not like how slow the first two acts are, it’s hard to deny how annoying yet clever and deep the level of deception goes amongst the characters and how one man can manipulate entire crime organizations, possibly even getting them to implode just by pestering them with misinformation.
The movie starts to pick up when Otomo comes into the fold because the boss and the underboss of the Sanno clan know that he can expose them for their traitorous actions that got them to the positions they currently hold (watch the first film to find out). Also, Otomo joins forces with an old enemy which no one from the established families sees coming, especially since both are pretty tough guys. It’s really exciting as an audience member because while Otomo wants to retire from this life of crime, you know he is eventually going to get sucked back in due to his desire to get revenge on whoever is trying to make his life difficult, in this case either the detective or the members of the Sanno clan who Nishino (Toshiyuki Nishida), Otomo’s former brother, sends after him.
While the story in the first film was terrific it was greatly enhanced by the massive body count and Kitano makes sure to up the ante when it comes to creative ways to kill people or just find a reason to kill someone. There is one scene where Otomo puts a drill through a guys face and another where they kill a guy using a pitching machine at a batting cage. The point isn’t to be gratuitous, because the scenes aren’t bloody, it’s just to show how brutal and twisted these guys are while they attempt to shakeup the status quo, find out the truth behind their brothers’ deaths and, ultimately, survive the onslaught of hits. As with the first film the body count progressively gets higher and doesn’t stop until the final moment of the film, which is probably the most satisfying part of the movie and certainly my favorite.
Beyond Outrage is a good film though certainly a lesser one in comparison to its predecessor. Most will probably find it too slow for their liking but I personally didn’t mind the slow-burn storytelling and lack of initial action since the layers of deception and my curiosity to see how it all unfolded kept me engaged. I have a feeling that since this is likely the middle chapter of a trilogy, the third film is going to go out with a bang and, knowing that, I can accept a slow middle chapter if there is a great payoff. It
Rating: Not the best yakuza film you’ll see and not as good as the original but it certainly entertains once the yelling and gunfire commences (6/10)
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