Review | Venice 2024: Broken Rage movie review – Takeshi Kitano’s deliciously meta yakuza comedy
Takeshi Kitano blissfully does his own thing as an ageing hitman in short-and-sweet yakuza comedy Broken Rage
3/5 stars
Now aged 77 and working with streamer Amazon for the first time, he delivers the short and sweet Broken Rage, a 62-minute doodle that returns Kitano to his more comic roots.
Playing out of completion at the Venice Film Festival, Broken Rage begins like one of Kitano’s more generic yakuza films. Kitano himself plays Mr Mouse, a hitman who collects his instructions in brown envelopes delivered to a cafe by an unseen contact.
His first assignment is whacking a posse of young thugs in a gaudy club, followed by drowning a gangster working out in a gym. But as he completes his tasks, he is arrested by two police.
Rather than throw him in jail, they want him to infiltrate a Tokyo drugs gang; in exchange, he will get his freedom and a new identity. So far, so run-of-the-mill. But then comes the twist, as this short comes to an end after 30 minutes.
