Aarcflick

 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 se...