**Fundamentals, reception.**

1. Japanese live action feature length film, 2010, rated R, 109 minutes, action.
2. IMDB: 6.8/10.0 from 6,811 audience ratings. Spoken word is in Japanese, sub-titles in English.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 77% on the meter; 64% liked it from 3,288 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.5/5.0 from 121,334 audience ratings.
5. Written and directed by: Takeshi Kitano.
6. Starring: Takeshi Kitano as Otomo, Kipei Shiina as Mizuno, Ryo Kase as Ishihara, Fumiyo Kohinata as Detective Kataoka, Soichiro Kitimura as Kan'nai (Mr. Chairman), Tadashi Sakata as Okazaki, Kenji Morinaga as Abe, Tokio Emoto as Emoto, Hideo Nakano as Kimura, Jun Kunimura as Ikemoto, Tetta Sugimoto as Ozawa, Tomokazu Miura as Kato, Yuka Itaya as Otomo's girlfriend, Renji Ishibashi as Murase.

**Setup and Plot**

1. This film is about warring clans within a larger yakuza community. Mr. Chairman is the current overall leader; Ikemoto is one of his vassals. Ikemoto, however, has started an alliance with the Murase family, which deals drugs. Mr. Chairman is old school, and does not like trading in drugs. The protagonist, Otomo, is a vassal of Ikemoto, but is a sworn brother of Murase. Mr. Chairman charges Otomo with breaking this alliance by moving against Murase. Otomo is reminded rather strongly that his loyalty to Mr. Chairman should outweigh his brotherhood to Murase.
2. In the meantime, Detective Kataoka of the Organized Crime Unit keeps getting paid off by Otomo. Kataoka gives Otomo intelligence that keeps the police off Otomo's back.
3. Otomo sends an underling to let one of Murase's lieutenants cheat him out of 1 million yen. When the lieutenant arrives at Otomo offices, he sees that the Otomo group is vassal to the Ikemoto family, and begs to skip receiving the payment. Otomo's people insist. Word gets back to Murase, who phones Otomo immediately. Otomo accepts money and a finger and an apology from Murase's under boss, Kimura. The Ikemotos demand a finger from the under boss for the insult.
4. As one might imagine, there was a lot of hurt pride. That, coupled with mistakes by underlings, ignites an escalating set of reprisals. Alliances shift. Ikemoto wants to keep the skim of the drug money, for instance, despite all the thunder coming down from Mr. Chairman.
5. Otomo tries to keep his standing with Mr. Chairman sound, but it is not easy; nor is keeping his sworn brotherhood with Murase. Mr. Chairman makes it worse by demanding reprisals.
6. Who survives this bloodbath? Will anyone be left in place?

**Conclusions**

1. One line summary: Harsh times during a clan versus clan yakuza war.
2. Four stars of five.

**Scores**

1. Cinematography: 10/10 Beautifully shot using excellent equipment.
2. Sound: 7/10 Moot; I read the subtitles. The background music was good, and the actors seemed to be well miked.
3. Acting: 8/10 All the actors were rather good. Gladly, the ones with the most screen time were the best.
4. Screenplay: 7/10 As a move-forward all-the-time action film, this was great. However, I could have used a bit more exposition of motivation. The film made more sense the second time I watched it, but was still a little unclear.

One of the things that always shock people when I tell it to them is the fact that I really don't like the Godfather-Trilogy. To me it was really long and boring, not much happening, and I simply cannot get all the fuzz people are making around these movies.

Outrage - in the original アウトレイジ , which should rather be translated into the phonetically correct "Autoreiji", as Japanese people would translate this title to, is probably best described as the Japanese version of the Godfather-Trilogy. And surprisingly I really enjoyed the movie.

First of, we get a more interesting movie that is not too hard to follow, still in the beginning you don't really get what this movie is going to unfold into:

We start of with a great meeting of the Sano-kai clan, the Yakuza family that is reigning over the greater Tokyo region. The grand Yakuza leader Sekiuchi is displeased with one of his Yakuza leaders, Ikemoto, who in prison befriended an unassociated and rivaling Yakuza leader named Murase. Ikemoto is ordered to get Murase in line, however to do so would mean to break the holy pact he swore, which in turn would be dishonorable. So he orders his subordinate Otomo to steer up some trouble that would so that would make Murase to be in debt to the Sano-kai clan which in turn would have to make him swear his legion to the Sano-kai. However, what non of the bosses are expecting: This actually is clever power-play and a plot to shift a number of power relationships.

This movie is interesting in may ways. First we get into a Yakuza movie that is more modern than typical other movies. And this modernes is a topic that is picked up even in the movie. We have younger Yakuza bosses who do not follow the customs of the older Yakuza, e.g. things such as cutting off a finger to plea for forgiveness. It is also a clever plot at which end a chain of events have been released to find a really unexpected end.

Besides this, the movie has some really ruthless graphical violence that will make you clench your teeth. In the end, every one of these guys is a ruthless criminal, there are a lot of events you will simply not see coming [spoiler]such as the cutting of the face[/spoiler].

It is also interestingly filmed - there where a few very interesting angles, but all in all the camerawork is really slow and steady, and the transitions rather untypically: They simply fade to black and then start at the next scene. And as strange as this is, it doesn't feel bad. It somehow fits the overall style, both of the movie as it is made as well as it fits the content of the movie, i.e. the plot.

I was intrigued and it got my interest right from the beginning to the end. Something you probably haven't seen yet, if you are - like me - more into western movie productions.