cityonfire.com | Movie News & Developments |
- Beyond Outrage (2012) Review
- Enter the Ninja | Blu-ray (Kino Video)
- Escape from New York: Collector’s Edition | Blu-ray (Shout! Factory)
- Firepower | Blu-ray (Scorpion Releasing)
| Posted: 07 Jan 2015 09:43 PM PST  "Beyond Outrage" Japanese Theatrical Poster Director: Takeshi Kitano By HKFanatic After delivering a modern update on the popular Zatoichi character in 2003, writer/director/actor Takeshi Kitano spent the rest of that decade on a detour into the world of avant garde cinema. Films like Glory to the Filmmaker! and Achilles and Tortoise had ostensibly little in common with the violent cop and Yakuza features that helped make Kitano an international sensation. Thus, it was viewed as something of a return to form when Kitano explored the Japanese criminal underworld once again with 2010′s Outrage. Outrage was a brutal, brutal film – it felt like at least one character was beaten or murdered every ten minutes, and it did for dental offices what Jaws did for the beach. While most fans of Asian cinema were quite pleased with Kitano’s delivery of bloody Yakuza thrills, there was a vocal contingent of critics who felt that the filmmaker had lost the poetic and meditative quality that defined earlier works such as Sonatine and Fireworks. Watching the 2012 sequel Beyond Outrage, it’s easy to suspect that perhaps Kitano felt the same way. In The Godfather Part II fashion, the movie picks up exactly where the first movie left off; however, the brutality is noticeably scaled back and there is a renewed focus on the backroom dealings and protracted schemes that make up the plot. As the film opens, Kato (Tomokazu Miura) is the President of the Sanno Yakuza faction, but there are many in clan who are not happy with his leadership style – and suspect that the mysterious death of their previous leader wasn’t so mysterious after all. An underboss named Tomita (Akira Nakao) travels all the way to Okinawa to visit the Hanabishi faction in order to solicit their leaders for help in deposing Kato. While Tomita’s bid doesn’t exactly play out the way he intended, it does set the stage for a deadly conflict which both factions may not survive. How does Takeshi Kitano’s character Otomo, who seemingly died of stab wounds at the end of the first Outrage, play into this? Well, I wouldn’t dare spoil that. With such a setup, one might expect Beyond Outrage to quickly escalate into a bloodbath par excellence. But this time around, Kitano is out to skewer a corrupt society rather than build a higher body count. In the world of Beyond Outrage, police collusion with the Yakuza is viewed as almost a given; and the Yakuza are portrayed as something like the shadiest business in town – you might lose your life rather than your job after a bad quarter, but in the end these gangsters are still just another business in the cutthroat capitalistic world they occupy. This isn’t to imply that Beyond Outrage is a bloodless affair: a batting cage sets the scene for the film’s most gruesome killing. But Kitano seems to consciously steer clear of the Grand Guignol of the original. This leads to a noticeably slower pace to Beyond Outrage, though the real disappointment is that the characterization of some of the characters often feels inconsistent with the first film. In particular, the snake-like Ishihara (Ryo Kase) betrays the calculating menace that made him such a threat in Outrage; while even President Kato has lost much of the cool and calm he displayed sitting on the throne in the final scene of Outrage. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, indeed. Some have speculated that Takeshi Kitano is more or less ‘over’ the Yakuza genre – and the hyper-violence of Outrage was just his way of giving the movie-going public what they wanted. In truth, Kitano admitted in an interview that he hoped the sequel was a massive hit so producers would finance a film he “really wants to do.” Still, even if the Outrage series is just Kitano’s way of gaining the cache to greenlight his next passion project, we’ve gained two solidly entertaining movies out of the deal. While Beyond Outrage may not reach the heights of its predecessor, the performances, cinematography, and editing are all on par with the original. Here’s hoping Kitano returns for one final, bloody coda to the series. HKFanatic’s Rating: 7/10 |
| Enter the Ninja | Blu-ray (Kino Video) Posted: 07 Jan 2015 08:43 PM PST  Enter the Ninja | Blu-ray (Kino Video) RELEASE DATE: May 2015 Kino Video presents the Blu-ray for 1981′s Enter the Ninja, directed by Menahem Golan (The Delta Force). Enter the Ninja is the first in a series of unrelated Ninja films produced by Cannon Films (read our review for Electric Boogaloo, a documentary about the Golan-Globus film empire). The film was followed by 1983′s Revenge of the Ninja and 1984′s Ninja III: The Domination). Enter the Ninja stars Franco Nero (Street Law, Django), Susan George (Straw Dogs) and Sho Kosugi (Revenge of the Ninja). Watch the trailer. Stay tuned for pre-order information. |
| Escape from New York: Collector’s Edition | Blu-ray (Shout! Factory) Posted: 07 Jan 2015 02:00 AM PST  Escape from New York: Collector's Edition | Blu-ray (Shout! Factory) RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2015 Shout! Factory presents the Escape from New York: Collector’s Edition Blu-ray. John Carpenter’s 1981 cult classic gets Shout’s “Collector’s Edition” treatment, so expect a load of brand new extra features! In 1997, when the U.S. President (Donald Pleasence) crashes into Manhattan, which is now a giant maximum security prison, a convicted bank robber (Kurt Russell) is sent in for a rescue. Also starring Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasence, Isaac Hayes and Harry Dean Stanton. Watch the trailer. Stay tuned for pre-order information. |
| Firepower | Blu-ray (Scorpion Releasing) Posted: 07 Jan 2015 12:00 AM PST  Firepower | Blu-ray (Scorpion Releasing) RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015 Scorpion Releasing presents the Limited Edition Blu-ray for 1979′s Firepower, directed by Michael Winner (Death Wish). In Firepower, a merc is hired by the FBI to track down a powerful recluse criminal. At the same time, a woman is also trying to track him down for her own personal vendetta. Firepower stars James Coburn, O.J. Simpson, Sophia Loren, Eli Wallach, Anthony Franciosa, George Grizzard, Vincent Gardenia, Fred Stuthman, Richard Caldicot and Jake LaMotta. Watch the trailer. Pre-order Firepower from Amazon.com today! |
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