It's been shuffling its tactiturn way through the festival circuit for months, but with an American release finally looming, here's a new trailer for Takeshi Kitano's **Outrage.
This is happy news, since it's Takeshi's first proper gangster movie in a decade. He drew a line under that stage of his career with Brother, seemingly somewhat equivocal about the head-stomping and eye-gouging that made his name (at least internationally; he's also famous as a TV comedian in Japan). Since then there've been self-reflexive comedies like Takeshis**'**** **and the brilliant samurai semi-musical Zatoichi, but not much along the lines of his signature quiet-violent formula, until now...
The US Outrage trailer is amusing for its old-school gravelly voiceover, but it's at least not one of those disingenuous affairs that doesn't actually admit that the film is subtitled. What it does give us is the trademark Takeshi chuckle; refusals of surrender; a bit of slashing; a bit of throat-punching; a bit of shooting; and a lot of very intense staring off-screen.
Back to the old business then, which is perhaps why Outrage hasn't picked up the best of notices in its life so far. Empire's Damon Wise saw it at Cannes last year though, and called it "slight and bloody, but by no means terrible", which is totally good enough for us. It'll be available on iTunes on October 18, and in US theatres in December, which we'd have thought was the wrong way round. We get it on DVD and blu-ray in the UK on November 14.