Critics reviews

Compared to [John] Woo, Kitano is brutally laconic. In Outrage Coda, except for one Wooish slow-mo massacre, violence is brusque, shocking, and over fast. In a film full of bland pans following yakuza cars here and there, the end of one panning movement bursts into shooting before you realize it's happening, and it ends just as suddenly. Kitano likes his confrontations, for sure, and sometimes there's a buildup, but mostly the blood just erupts, punctuating long scenes of gangster intrigue.

The broad crime comedy Ryuzo and His Seven Henchmen was clunky but a success in Japan, so Coda isn't a case of Kitano playing to form for commercial reasons. It simply shows him honing his crime movie craft in a way that consolidates his mastery of a minimalist style that surely makes him the Jean-Pierre Melville of Asian cinema. While it (perhaps deliberately) brings nothing radically new to the table..., Outrage Coda will be catnip to Kitano followers in Japan and on the festival circuit.

One of the distinguishing features of his work has always been how intelligently Kitano the director (Takeshi) uses Kitano the actor ("Beat"). And "Outrage Coda" is no exception: Kitano understands that Otomo's inherently fascinating presence — his strange shuffling gait and his weathered, seen-it-all face, only rarely split by a slightly deranged, lopsided smile — is the film's most potent weapon, and accordingly he deploys it sparingly.