Outrage Coda

The movie opens up with a scene of two ordinary-looking men, Otomo and his right-hand man Ichikawa fishing off the resort island of Jeju in South Korea. Later on that night Otomo is chauffeured to a nightclub full of prostitutes. He is treated with the utmost respect by all thus identifying him as the chief. He soon receives a call from a customer at a hotel with a service complaint. Otomo and a team of men go to meet the customer and encounter a henchman beating up on two of his prostitutes in a hotel living room. Otomo is told that the two prostitutes were non-compliant with their boss, Hanada of the Hanabishi family, the Yakuza family that controls most of Japan. When they go in to talk to him in the bedroom they find him on the bed littered with S&M toys. When Otomo asks for compensation for having hurt the girls Hanada angrily and disrespectfully threatens him. However, only after Otomo's men all show that they are armed and more than willing to shoot him, does Hanada calm down, and softly asks how much should he pay, Otomo tells him to consider the damage and offense he has caused and to pay them accordingly the next day. It is Hanada who blurts out 2 million yen that that amount is finalized. However, Hanada reneges on his promise to pay and has Otomo's man killed when he tries to pick-up the money the next day.

(Here the movie presents the viewer a comparison between two Yakuza, Otomo and Hanada. Otomo the older of the two demonstrates work-ethic, loyalty and honor to his clan, while Hanada represents greed, perversion and lack of respect. Hanada tries to solve everything through violence or money. The killing of Otomo's man is taken by Otomo as the greatest personal offense, even though it is clear that he didn't even know his man's name and Otomo is willing to put his life at risk to restitute his honor.)

When Hanada, now back in Tokyo, describes the incident to Nakata his boss, the seriousness of his actions are given consideration once they identify that Otomo and the man Hanada had killed belong to Mr. Chang, a fixer who also owns a multinational criminal organization. Nakata offers to mediate the matter for Hanada by meeting with Mr. Chang, intending to settle the situation with 30 million yen as an offering of peace. However, Mr. Chang refuses the 30 million yen, and curiously gives them another 30 million yen to take with them once they leave.

Nakata and Hanada are puzzled by Mr Chang's gesture until their boss Nishino, the second in command of the Hanabishi clan, mistakenly explains that their original offer of 30 million yen was not enough, and to show his displeasure and the insignificance of their offer Mr. Chang gave them an equal amount. Nishino's explanation is proven wrong however when he meets Mr. Chang and presents him this time with 100 million yen. Mr. Chang refuses again and this time does not even take the time to give Nishino and Hanada the minimum courtesy of attending them nor their 100 million yen. It is clear that while the Hanabishi family are dealing with the situation in the standard way the Yakuza does, Chang does not.

(This brings to light another of the underlying themes of the movie: the comparison of the modern Yakuza and the Chang, a similar organization that has evolved. Since Mr. Chang, in scene after scene, refuses to take either vengeance or tribute for the perceived offense and even goes to the extreme of declaring that the Chang are not Yakuza. The Chang organization is now a modern multinational corporation dealing in multi-billion-yen real-estate projects throughout Asia.)

While this is happening in the forefront, in the background the politics of the Hanabishi clan are in full display. The current clan chairman is an ex-stock-broker Nomura who assumed power of the clan because he was the brother-in-law of the old chairman. Nishino and Nakata have very little respect for him and want to take advantage of the Hanada-Otomo conflict in order to overthrow and eliminate Nomura, blaming it on the Chang organization in the process. Meanwhile, the Sanno clan (absorbed into the Hanabishi clan in the previous film) carefully assesses the situation and tries to take advantage for themselves.

Mr Chang minimizes the conflict and settles the situation peacefully and wants Otomo to stand down from any retribution he is planning, while Hanada's men try to assassinate Mr. Chang, but fail. Being a former Sanno clan member and personally has conflict with the Hanabishi clan, Otomo decides to avenge the offense to him and Mr Chang by traveling back to Japan and killing the Hanabishi responsible.

(Thus the two themes come together: a new wealthy multi-national organization whose members work, loyalty and honor are unparalleled against an old decrepit clan whose main motivation by its members' values is to squeeze every situation for financial profit even if it means betraying its own members.)

The conflict culminates in Otomo seeking out all the Hanabishi responsible and killing them all in insidious ways. He did all this without Mr. Chang's approval, and consequently, he punishes himself by committing modern seppuku - shooting himself as punishment for his offense towards Mr. Chang, once again demonstrating his honor and loyalty. Mr. Chang, when told of the news, reflects sadly while staring into the empty distance.

• Takeshi Kitano (Beat Takeshi) as Otomo
• Toshiyuki Nishida as Nishino
• Nao Ōmori
• Pierre Taki
• Yutaka Matsushige as Detective Shigeta
• Ren Osugi
• Sansei Shiomi as Nakata
• Hakuryu
• Tatsuo Nadaka
• Ken Mitsuishi as Gomi
• Taizo Harada
• Hiroyuki Ikeuchi
• Ittoku Kishibe
• Hiro Honda
• Tokio Kaneda as Mr. Chang

In September 2012, Takeshi Kitano said that the producers wanted him to make the third Outrage film.[4] As reported by Macnab, the making of a third Outrage film would complete the first film trilogy for Takeshi Kitano. As of 30 June 2013, Box Office Mojo reported a total revenue for Outrage approaching USD ten million with USD 8,383,891 in the total worldwide lifetime box office.[5] As of 28 July 2013, Beyond Outrage had receipts more than twice as high, at USD 16,995,152.

At the premiere of the film during the 74th Venice International Film Festival Kitano recalled his previous positive experience in Venice at the 1997 festival where his film Hana-bi won the Golden Lion, following in the tradition of other Japanese films such as Rashomon which won the gold prize at the 1951 festival. Kitano stated about the new film that, "There are various types of Yakuza... even if they are now disappearing. There are various kinds of humanity within these violent groups. Violence contrasts with some of the issues I dealt with in the past, but in this film there are people who are trying to take care of other people. The actions of the characters are influenced by what surrounds them, but I have to admit that I'm a little tired of devoting myself to violence, so I put many elements in the new film."[6]

In July 2017, ScreenDaily summarized the production crew which participated in the production of the film stating: "The film crew includes composer Keiichi Suzuki, cinematographer Katsumi Yanagijima, lighting designer Hitoshi Takaya, production designer Norihiro Isoda, sound designer Yoshifumi Kureishi, casting director Takefumi Yoshikawa, first assistant director Hirofumi Inaba and line producer Shinji Komiya."[7]

On 9 september 2017, Outrage Coda received its premiere screening at the Venice Film Festival in Italy at the closing ceremonies as the final film screened out of competition.[9] It received general release in Japan on 7 October 2017.[10]

• Official website (in Japanese)
• Outrage Coda at IMDb 
• Outrage Coda at AllMovie