Broken Rage Review

Broken Rage is now streaming on Prime Video.

Takeshi Kitano (a.k.a. Beat Takeshi) is as synonymous with Japanese mob thrillers as Robert De Niro is with American crime dramas. The similarities don’t end there: Each has had successful runs in the comedy world – though in Takeshi’s case, the laughs came first. You might remember Kitano as such no-nonsense tough guys the teacher from Battle Royale; if you watched a lot of cable in the 2000s, you may recognize him as one of the hosts of Most Extreme Elimination Challenge, Spike TV’s dubbed-over adaptation of the wacky game show Takeshi’s Castle. In his new Prime Video film, Broken Rage, a self-aware Kitano attempts (but doesn’t quite manage) to fuse these facets of his onscreen persona, poking fun at the Yakuza genre alongside an ensemble crew of similarly typecast actors. Mercifully short, Broken Rage is an exciting premise suffering from a bland, stale execution.

Broken Rage begins as a gritty, paint-by-numbers mob story about an old hitman named Nezumi (Kitano) donning disguises and pulling off a series of contract killings. When he’s apprehended by detectives Inoue (Tadanobu Asano) and Fukuda (Nao Omori), the pair enlist Nezumi as an undercover agent to bust a Yakuza drug ring operated by crime bosses Kanashiro (Shido Nakamura) and Tomita (longtime Kitano collaborator Hakuryu). To say Broken Rage’s plot is painfully generic would be as much an understatement as saying there are some notable names in its cast: Asano just vaulted to new levels of fame and acclaim thanks to FX’s version of Shogun! He’s reuniting with his Ichi the Killer co-star Nao Omori – Ichi himself! But that boilerplate feeling is intentional, and it sets up the conceptual, but not successful, punchline that Broken Rage drops at the 20-minute: Retelling the same story, this time as a comedy.

Most of the opening scenes were shot cheaply in empty buildings, gyms, and parking lots lit in muted colors and backed by an underused jazz score. The cast breathlessly deliver their lines in tensionless, clichéd confrontations so matter-of-factly, they might as well be reciting the audio description track. Unfortunately, Broken Rage’s self-parody chops aren’t any sharper, and its comedic redux is populated with stale jokes that barely elicit a pity chuckle. It may be making its debut on an international streaming service, but the script is full of culturally specific gags that even the most seasoned weeb might find indecipherable.

The humor of Broken Rage is like a thousand rapid-fire Goldilocks scenarios: They’re either too cheap and repetitive to find funny or too absurdist and random to hit the mark. Kitano endures a gauntlet of pratfalls and slapstick bits where Nezumi trips up stairs, bangs his knees on the corner of a table, sits in a collapsing chair, and gets crushed by a crowd of partygoers. Elsewhere, Nezumi and company suddenly find themselves wearing luchador masks and mouse getups mid-conversation, watch extras pantomiming their private parts exploding, or engage in endless, over-explained misunderstandings about names.

As if to shield itself from criticism, Broken Rage twice cuts to a simulated livechat depicting the running commentary of two moviegoers. They bemoan the lack of explosions and shootouts, dissect the effectiveness of the comedy, and demand refunds. In a show of the movie throwing its hands up at itself, this self-described “Runningtime filler” ends in the agreement that most movies are too long, anyways.

Broken Rage wants to take the piss out of crime dramas. Unfortunately, its approach to doing so amounts to prominent actors doing silly Adult Swim-style sketches. Given how doddering, random, and drawn out its antics are, its comedic sensibility is best suited to a grandparent’s Facebook timeline.