Posted in: Amazon, Movies, Review | Tagged: beat takeshi, Broken Rage, prime video, streaming, takeshi kitano

Broken Rage: Two Sides of Kitano, Serious Auteur and Goofy Comedian

Broken Rage is a story told two times: first as grim existential thriller, then as slapstick comedy as Takeshi Kitano's artistic statement

Broken Rage is the newest movie from Japanese director Takeshi Kitano… or is it? Kitano is best known in the West for his somber and dark gangster movies like Sonatine, Hanabi, and the recent Outrage trilogy, and more thoughtful arthouse fare like A Scene at the Sea, Kids Return, and Dolls. In Japan, he's seen as a comedian and ubiquitous media figure who started out in stand-up comedy, then slapstick sketch comedy, game show hosting, frequent guest on talk shows, magazine and newspaper columnist, and painter. He has thoughts about all of this, and Broken Rage is his expression of those thoughts. And it's not as somber or high-minded as you expect. It's funny and gleefully silly.

A Story Told Twice., The First Time is Tragedy; the Second is Comedy

Broken Rage is, at first, the type of somber and austere gangster hitman story Kitano is best known for on the international circuit. He stars as Mouse, an aging hitman who takes assignments from a mysterious client he never met. Mouse carries out his job with cold efficiency until the witnesses turn him in. He cuts a deal with the equally ruthless cops to infiltrate a Yakuza drug operation and betray its bosses. The half-hour story is directed with the expected austere detachment Kitano frames and edits his movies that hint at the existential emptiness of his mob characters, though the detachment is often on the verge of deadpan comedy. So far, so Kitano. Then the switch hits.

The second half of Broken Rage is the exact same story as Mouse, the Hitman, but this time played and directed as a dumb slapstick comedy. Like really dumb. Really, really, really dumb. It's the same story with the same scenes, but every one of them is now reconfigured into Benny Hill-levels of slapstick knockabout comedy, then it escalates into Monty Python levels of utter insanity. Mouse is no longer a ruthlessly efficient stone killer but a hapless, nervous (for good reason) schlub who can't walk five steps without tripping over something and hurting himself. He's completely incompetent in a world of surreal lunacy. Even the stoic cops who nab him (Nao Mori and Shogun's Tadanobu Asano) are now gleefully creepy goofballs. The Yakuza gangsters Mouse is sent to infiltrate are silly sods who endlessly bicker with him, each other, and anyone in the room at the drop of a hat over the pettiest things. It's no wonder Kitano bills himself in the cast as "Beat" Takeshi, the nickname he was famous for as a comedian since the 1980s while his director billing is his full name of Takeshi Kitano. In retelling the same story as a Mad Magazine-style spoof, he's just showing his own thought process, that every serious story can be really dumb when you decide to make it that way. There's no clearer statement of intent than that.

Broken Rage seems to be a simple goof and exercise in self-parody that only a director as singular as Kitano would think of. It doesn't need complexity, but it has layers of meaning. It's a meditation on storytelling and genre and how a sense of humor and a sense of irreverence can totally turn the same story into a different animal. It's also Kitano's personal artistic declaration, that he's both the serious arthouse director and the goofball comedian that defined his career. There's no real binary, he seems to be saying. Like it or not, he's doing what he wants, how he wants, and when he wants, and at just 67 minutes, he doesn't overstay his welcome. The best comedian knows to leave the audience hungry for more, and he ends it exactly when he knows he should. Broken Rage is also his way of saying even an artist's personal statement can and should be goofy fun. "I'm both serious and very silly," he seems to be saying. "Deal with it."

Broken Rage is streaming on Prime.

Broken Rage

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Review by Adi Tantimedh

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9/10

A hitman story told twice, once as dark existential thriller, then as really dumb slapstick comedy, Takeshi Kitano's simple yet layered exercise in doing the two things he does best - sombre existential gangster movies and gleefully goofy slapstick - is both an examination in the two sides of his sensibility that are inseparable in his process and an artistic statement that makes fun of itself and doesn't wear out its welcome.

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