Outrage

Ah, the walkout. Nothing more fires the heart than the sight of a film festival attendee storming theatrically out of the auditorium.

During the late night Cannes screening of

Outrage

, the superb new Yakuza thriller from Takeshi Kitano (playing in competition), a handful of punters offered just such a gesture.

When the first finger was chopped off, two or three made for the door. When the gangster had a dental drill rammed in his mouth, some more left. Come back! You’ll miss the scene where a hoodlum slams a man’s jaw shut with such vigour that it severs his tongue.

The fleeing viewers expected, perhaps, more whacky surrealism in the vein of recent Kitano films such as Glory to the Filmmakersor Achilles and the Tortoise. However, this picture is credited to Beat Takeshi, the handle the old joker uses for his more mainstream pictures, and, though beautifully made, nobody is likely to confuse it with an art film.

The plot is complicated, but largely irrelevant. Takeshi plays the subsidiary boss of a Tokyo gang involved in a series of interlocking disputes with rival operations. When a senior hood is shaken down in a hostess club, the reprisals escalate colourfully and bloodily towards apocalyptic mayhem.

Outrageproudly proves that, despite imitations and mutations by the likes of Quentin Tarantino, there is still mileage in the black-suit-and-bloodied-shirt school of Japanese gangster movie. Often hilariously funny, played out to Keiichi Suzuki's raw synthesizer music, the picture is endlessly inventive in the manner of its copious annihilations.

If it were to win the Palme d'Or then – despite victories by Pulp Fictionand Wild at Heart – it would be by far the most violent picture ever to do so. It would, however, be a fitting tribute to an eccentric old master.