In his nearly three decades as a director, ¡°Beat¡± Takeshi Kitano has won many critical plaudits and prizes abroad. But in Japan he is best known as a TV personality and comedian. These two strands of his artistic personality ¡ª master director and mass entertainer ¡ª have come together in his ¡°Outrage¡± trilogy about present-day gang wars, with Kitano himself starring as an old-school yakuza, Otomo.
The trilogy ends with the new ¡°Outrage Coda.¡± Similar to ¡°Outrage¡± (2010) and ¡°Outrage Beyond¡± (2012), the cast is heavily populated with graying veterans, the characters regularly explode into purple-faced rants and the body count is off the charts.
¡°Outrage Coda¡± also features a full complement of gangster types, from the floridly eccentric to the coldly psychotic. If the action isn¡¯t especially fresh ¡ª Kitano fans will spot references to his earlier films ¡ª his talent for spare-but-impactful visuals and mean-but-funny twists is still intact. And this unregenerately macho action flick digs deep into the criminal psyche, exposing its loneliness as well as its unlimited capacity for cruelty.
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