Takeshi Kitano (aka Beat Takeshi) is synonymous with Japanese mob thrillers, much like Robert De Niro is with American police dramas. The similarities don’t end there: both have had successful careers in the world of comedy, though in Takeshi’s case, the laughs came first. You might remember Kitano as that no-nonsense tough guy, the master of Battle Royale; if you watched much cable TV in the 2000s, you might recognize him as one of the hosts of Most Extreme Elimination Challenge, Spike TV’s dubbed adaptation of the wacky game show Takeshi’s Castle. In his new Prime Video film, Broken Rage, a self-aware Kitano attempts (but doesn’t quite succeed) to fuse these facets of his on-screen persona, poking fun at the Yakuza genre alongside a crew of similarly typecast actors. Fortunately, Broken Rage is an exciting premise that suffers from bland, stale execution.
Broken Rage begins as a gritty mob story about an aging hitman named Nezumi (Kitano) who dons a disguise and carries out a series of contract killings. When he’s arrested by detectives Inoue (Tadanobu Asano) and Fukuda (Nao Omori), the pair recruit Nezumi as an undercover agent to dismantle a Yakuza drug ring operated by crime bosses Kanashiro (Shido Nakamura) and Tomita (Kitano’s longtime collaborator Hakuryu).
Director: Takeshi Kitano
Writer: Takeshi Kitano
Stars: Takeshi Kitano, Tadanobu Asano, Nao Ômori
To say Broken Rage’s plot is painfully generic would be as much of an understatement as saying there are some notable names in its cast: Asano just rose to new levels of fame and acclaim thanks to FX’s version of Shogun! He’ll be reuniting with his Ichi the Killer co-star Nao Omori – Ichi himself! But that sense of repetition is intentional, and sets up the conceptual but unsuccessful endpoint Broken Rage drops at the 20-minute mark: retelling the same story, this time as a comedy.
Most of the opening scenes were cheaply shot in empty buildings, gymnasiums, and parking lots lit in dull colors and backed by a sparsely used jazz soundtrack. The cast delivers their breathless lines in tensionless, cliché-filled standoffs so naturally that they might as well be reciting the audio description track. Unfortunately, Broken Rage’s self-parody chops aren’t any sharper, and its comedic repetition is populated with stale jokes that barely elicit a pitying laugh. It may be making its debut on an international streaming service, but the script is filled with culturally specific gags that even the most seasoned weeb might find indecipherable.
Broken Rage’s humor is like a thousand Goldilocks scenarios on full throttle: They’re either too cheap and repetitive to be found funny or too absurd and random to hit their mark. Kitano endures a series of falls and slapstick scenes where Nezumi trips down stairs, hits his knees on the corner of a table, sits on a collapsing chair, and is crushed by a crowd of partygoers. Elsewhere, Nezumi and company suddenly find themselves wearing wrestler masks and mouse costumes mid-conversation, watch extras pantomime their private parts exploding, or engage in endless, overexplained misunderstandings about names.
As if to protect itself from criticism, Broken Rage twice cuts to a simulated live chat showing the running comments of two moviegoers. They lament the lack of explosions and gunfights, dissect the comedy’s effectiveness, and demand refunds. In a display of the film giving in to itself, this self-described “filler movie” ends with the agreement that most movies are too long, anyway.
Broken Rage wants to poke fun at police dramas. Unfortunately, its approach to doing so boils down to A-list actors doing silly Adult Swim-style skits.
Despite Beat Takeshi’s reputation as a titan of police drama and Japanese comedy, Broken Rage’s high-concept attempt to bridge the genres is a setup that doesn’t pay off. Its best efforts to poke fun at mobster movie cliches are little more than a cheap, absurd assortment of stale jokes that are either too culturally impenetrable to find funny or too standard to merit a sympathetic laugh. Neither the talent of the writer-director-star nor cast mates like Tadanobu Asano and Nao Omori are enough to save this thing.
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