Takeshi Kitano went to the Cannes Film Festival this year hoping to snag the big prize that had so far eluded him: the Palme d'Or. He left with little more than a stack of negative reviews from the international media for his competition entry, "Outrage." One panel of critics, for the trade magazine "Screen International," gave it the lowest average rating of any competition film: 0.9.
What happened? Kitano was feted throughout the 1990s, both at home and abroad, for combining extreme violence with zero cool in his films about cops and gangsters, including his 1993 international breakthrough "Sonatine."
His signature stylistics, from the pawky black humor to the dispassionate recording of tortures and murders, became influential among his fellow directors in Japan, while inspiring critical rhapsodies here and abroad not heard since the heydays of Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa.