The first thing you probably need to do after watching Broken Rage is rush to the internet and explore the legacy of director Takeshi Kitano. Since I wasn’t all that well-versed with Kitano’s work, I dug a little and found out the man used to be a huge deal as a comedian in Japan, and then he went on to make a slew of hardboiled crime movies, all centering on the Yakuza. That does explain Broken Rage, by the way, if you think about it—it is both a Yakuza movie and a deadpan comedy. Of course, what separates this from anything else is the director refusing to follow the typical movie formula of telling the story, act by act. Instead, he has told the same story twice here—both as a comedy and a drama. In fact, the second part is like a spoof of the first. The odd structure of Broken Rage is what makes it what it is, and in this article we’re mainly going to look into that.
Spoilers Ahead
What Happens In The Movie?
Kitano, the man himself, plays Takeshi, a no-nonsense hitman who’s working for a mysterious someone called M. He may be (really) old, but make no mistake, he’s as good as your standard assassin character in movies. Takeshi has never seen M; the details of his assignments are always left at a local cafe, which is run by a simpleton, Yoshida. Once the job is done, our old man receives a key at his residence, which leads to a bank locker from where he picks up the payment. That’s basically the structure here. So we see Takeshi picking up his first assignment, where he has to take care of a young man at a nightclub. The way he does that—by coolly pointing the gun and pulling the trigger, wearing black shades—is enough to establish that this is a guy who’s not to be messed with. The second assignment is a bit difficult, though, where he has to kill a man at a gym who’s always with his entourage of two men—likely bodyguards. Takeshi still pulls it off, and one of the bodyguards ends up as collateral damage. There’s one problem, though: both times our old hitman leaves witnesses, which brings the police to him. Despite claiming he’s innocent, Takeshi finds it hard to get away as he’s recognized by a woman from the nightclub as well as an attendant from the gym. The two police officers (one of them played by Shogun‘s Tadanobu Asano) then come up with a proposition—Takeshi has to help them in infiltrating a drug ring, and in return, they’re going to let him go. As the only other option for him is spending the rest of his life in prison, the hitman has no other choice but to take the deal.
Does Takeshi Find His Freedom?
The job now is quite simple. Takeshi has to befriend Tomita, through whom he lands a job—as a henchman—in a gang run by Kaneshiro. The police want to catch Kaneshiro’s gang and another gang during a drug deal, and Takeshi has to play an important part in that. Generally these things don’t go that smoothly, but this one is not your usual genre joint, so here, everything goes as per the plan only. Naturally, Takeshi goes free, as that was exactly what the police promised him.
What Happens In The Movie, Second Time Around?
We go back to where things started again. Only this time, our old hitman is sloppy as hell. At the cafe, he constantly keeps sitting on the one chair that’s broken. He’s less than half as cool as before during the first assignment at the nightclub. He’s even worse during the second as he accidentally kills the wrong man, thinking he’s the target. Getting caught is inevitable for someone like that; only this time the police officers arrive in the cafe full force. It’s the same drill again—with the witnesses coming to identify the assassin—only this Takeshi is sassier than the earlier one, so he himself reminds them that it was obviously him. The police officers give him the same offer again, but for no valid reason, Asano’s character threatens Takeshi by inserting a long, pointy sword inside his own throat, which may or may not be a reference to Shogun. Also, cafe owner Yoshida appears out of nowhere, wearing a bat costume. Anyway, Takeshi does take the deal, just like last time.Â
So, does Takeshi find his freedom again?
It’s practically ‘they’re the same picture’ but with a major key difference and a considerable amount of exaggeration. It seems like Kitano made the same thing, but high on crack. Obviously, that is the intention here, and it is quite hilarious to watch. There can’t be any logical explanation behind Takeshi wearing a black ski mask during the police interrogation other than the man—both in the reel and real— doing it for shits and giggles. Unlike last time, when Takeshi had to mock fight an undercover officer to get noticed by Tomita at a bar, here he doesn’t do anything and sits around until the end of the night. When the bar closes, Tomita feels pity for him and gives him the job. Then it goes the same way, only everyone, including Kaneshiro, appears to be patients of a mental asylum. There is a musical chair sequence, which has absolutely no point to it, but is hands down the most hilarious thing I have seen in a while. Takeshi wins the game, and Kaneshiro is so happy about that because why wouldn’t he be? As far as the drug deal goes, that remains mostly identical except for the additional topping of two cars (of the two gangs) having a little ‘crush’ on each other, if you know what I mean. Then we have the key difference, of course, which is the big reveal that To’M’ita is actually M—it’s hidden inside the name itself. And Takeshi doesn’t get his freedom, unfortunately.Â
Broken Rage ends with taking us back to the beginning again, only this time Takeshi is so sloppy that he somehow bumps into the cafe door and falls down before even entering. Does he live or die? I guess Kitano wants to leave that up to us, and I don’t see a reason to complain about that. However, I might be overreaching here but the possibility of making more and more adaptations of the same story (which they call spin off) is endless here, if you think about it. So there can very well be sequels after sequels, which I’ll be totally game for.
P.S: Kitano makes a quasi audience part of the movie and shows their reaction to it – which varies from appreciation to confusion to straight up abuse. I thought this was a great touch. I’m totally sold by the man’s legacy.
