Broken Rage

Ostensibly a split piece with equal time apportioned to telling the same story, first as an action thriller then immediately again as a comedy, Takeshi Kitano's Broken Rage is - thanks to its writer-director-actor - equally hilarious in either half. Basically, everything that Kitano does (at least to this viewer) has inherent comedic value. His physical performance, honed over decades spent capering first as a bawdy television funny man then later as a highly feted arthouse idol, is always acutely impassive or expressionless. His characters, frequently career criminals with only a vague grasp on social norms, can often be read as acutely vacant or even buffoonish. Kitano's deadpan presence always suggests some unquantifiable but crucial absence in the psychological make-up of these men. As an actor, Kitano is particularly well attuned to portraying sociopaths then. The alarming bluntness with which his characters behave is always at least darkly amusing, largely for an obvious lack of caution in how they present themselves.

So, when performing a night club assassination as he called upon to do twice here, Kitano doesn't necessarily even need to fumble his firearm to elicit a titter. Just him standing over his quarry, carelessly firing into the shrieking human mass that squirms beneath him is strange and pig-headed enough to raise a smile. Kitano's is a comedy predicated on manners or, perhaps more accurately, the explosively violent disruption of serious or ceremonial situations. He is the wildcard element that has suddenly been introduced into these hemmed-in environments, only to then trample all over everybody's carefully curated behaviours and personas. Similarly, he is an indefatigable pest who is completely immune to the irritations his presence arouses. Kitano's now obvious and advancing age is no hindrance when essaying this kind of performance either. If anything his rounder face and stout, creaking ambulation only enhance it. Whether viewed through the lens of a crime film or a slapstick comedy, Kitano remains an incredible proposition: a big, blindingly bright shining star that pulverises everything in its orbit.