So exactly what is the story here? One family goes war with other over a host bar money that they already resolved? And the head clan guy tells to destroy lesser affiliated family, exactly for what reason?
Because the chairman was playing with his underlings trying to stay on top.
Why can't you be a non-conformist like everyone else?share
Well I have to say I was unimpressed. The Yakuza underworld is ruthless alright point well shown I guess. Mostly this movie was during any given scene someone would call someone else an a$$hole punch them and some act of violence would ensue...jump to next scene and repeat and that was it, that was the whole movie.
share"Because the chairman was playing with his underlings trying to stay on top."
Yeah. As I understand it, the chairman wanted to eliminate Ikemoto and the Murase family because they were dealing drugs/associating with drug-dealing gangsters so he(and Kato) pitted them against each other. Ikemoto played right along: Despute all of his supposed loyalty to Murase, he took every opportunity to exploit and betray him. On top of that, there was also a conspiracy to eliminate the chairman so that the syndicate could deal in drugs and other less old-school Yakuza enterprises. In addition to the escalating tit-for-tat violence, there was a lot of Machiavellian maneuvering at work. I consider this movie to be sort of the flip-side to Kitano's "Brother". In "Brother", we saw how the "sworn brother" relationship between gangsters could be one of great loyalty and friendship. In Outrage, alliances were only formalities, betrayal and treachery were the name of the game. It's a less romantic view of the Yakuza, a deconstruction of the "honorable gangster" motif.
Have to agree with you and the op, just because it's foreign, doesn't mean it's good. I didn't enjoy the feel of it and wasn't particularly impressed. It was ok but I feel like there was no real story being told, except the yakuza are ruthless and no one seems particularly loyal to one and other (at all!) which didn't seem particularly Japanese to me.
I'm sure there's far better Yakuza movies out there.
I enjoyed watching how conniving pretty much EVERYBOY was and seeing how the backstabbing played out. I found it pretty fun and entertaining. Not sure what you folks were expecting. Not every gangster flick is gonna have a strong emotional punch to it. I like that Outrage doesn't try to hide what truly dishonest, complete scumbags these guys are.
The poster 2 above me put it fantastically.