Japanese Action Comedy Needs Only 62 Minutes To Bring The House Down [Venice]

Broken Rage has put me in a difficult position. On the one hand, I want you to have the same experience with it that I did, and I went in completely blind. On the other, I don’t quite have the courage to pull a Jack Torrance and fill several more paragraphs with the same sentence repeated ad nauseam. So, I’ll say now that you should see Broken Rage, preferably with people. If you’re not sold yet, read on, but know there’s no shame in stopping as soon as you are. You can always bookmark this and come back later!

All I knew ahead of seeing this film was that it was the latest work from Japanese filmmaker and star Takeshi Kitano, and that it ran just over an hour. There wasn’t much else to know at the time – when it was announced in the Venice lineup, it was described as a surprise, late submission, with no information about it available anywhere online.

What we were ultimately treated to came in two segments: two tellings of the same story. In both, Kitano plays Nezumi (which translates to mouse), a killer for hire. He gets his contracts from Mr. M, who leaves unlabeled envelopes for him at a local café. After a couple hits, he gets nabbed by the cops, who recruit him for an assignment to secure his freedom. He must go undercover as a bodyguard for a local Yakuza boss and gather evidence on their role in the drug trade.

Broken Rage Is Structured On The Idea Of Set-Up & Punchline

And It Works Beautifully

In the first telling, titled “Broken Rage,” the 77-year-old Kitano is a ruthlessly effective badass. The story moves quickly, progressing through the beats expected of a familiar genre, and Nezumi breezes through each with the ease of an action antihero. It’s often amusing, both in its stylistic abruptness and in the ways it makes Kitano almost absurdly cool. Every task he’s given goes his way, and he hardly breaks a sweat.

Then, a new section announces itself as “Spin Off.” It begins with the very same drone shot of a cityscape that opened the movie, except that the drone suddenly falls, turning the buildings on their sides. When Nezumi goes to enter the café, as he always did before without incident, two girls exit at the same time and whack him in the face with the door. He goes to sit, and we hear a tremendous crash. The barista informs him too late tne chair is broken. We cut to Nezumi on the ground in an outrageous tableau, surrounded by wreckage.

Energy rippled through the audience (which, I’ll admit, was charged from the get-go to see the new Kitano) as Broken Rage‘s full purpose came into view. We realized that everything we’d seen up to that point was all set-up for a series of jokes that could now come at us in a relentless stream. From then on, every scene contained the anticipatory joy of remembering what comes next and imagining how it could be parodied, and the jolt of the often unexpected punchlines. The laughter did not stop until the credits rolled.

And Everything In Between

I won’t go further into Broken Rage‘s individual bits, except to say that the film’s sense of humor is somewhere in the realm of Airplane! and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Unrestrained silliness reigns, fueled by a honed awareness of the expectations that genre and movies in general create in an audience. Some meta-jokes are quite clever, while other visual gags are outright ridiculous. Certain scenes have clearly improvised sections, with actors visibly breaking in surprise. It is an absolute joy to watch, and undoubtedly the most fun I’ve had at a Venice screening this year.

While much praise goes to how the movie was conceived and executed, how it’s performed is equally essential. Everyone involved has a stock character to play, and for the comedy to work, they have to find ways to completely upend their role while still keeping it intact. The crime story still has to exist, and to function, for us to experience it as falling apart. Tadanobu Asano (currently Emmy-nominated for Shogun) and Nao Omori play the two detectives, while Shidō Nakamura and Hakuryu play the two mob bosses, and all four tread this line with real skill.

Kitano is a special case; those familiar with his performance style know he’s virtually a type on his own. What works so well in Broken Rage is that he essentially does the opposite of his castmates, and plays his character the same way both times. The Nezumi of the first section is as confident in his abilities as he has every right to be, and he retains that same swagger in “Spin Off,” despite having absolutely no claim to it. What makes it enjoyable to watch him succeed works even better when he starts bungling everything.

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Broken Rage doesn’t have a release date as of writing, but it was produced by Amazon MGM Studios with the intent of releasing on Prime Video sometime in 2025. I don’t doubt that it will work well in that format, but whenever it does become available, I encourage everyone to arrange viewing parties for friends and family at home. These are laughs you’ll want to share with others.

Broken Rage premiered at the Venice Film Festival Out of Competition. The film is 62 minutes long and is not yet rated. It will be available to stream exclusively on Prime Video in 2025.