10 Recent Movies That Totally Trolled Audiences

For anyone who scrolled through Amazon Prime recently and marvelled that a new film from legendary actor-filmmaker Takeshi Kitano had landed on the platform, they had no damn idea what they were getting with Broken Rage.

Quietly dumped on the streaming platform back in February, the poster makes it look like a dark crime comedy in the vein of Kitano's prior work, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

Broken Rage's head-scratcher of a gimmick is that the same short story - about an ageing hitman (Kitano) trying to earn his freedom - is told twice, once as a serious-minded thriller and once as an absurdist comedy.

The result is a film that intentionally upends its tone entirely at the mid-way point. 

Beyond that, for anyone keen to complain about the movie's obviously low budget, Kitano beats them to the punch, as text messages from "audience members" occasionally pop up on-screen to criticise the production values, pacing, and other aspects.

Whether you consider Broken Rage a successful experiment or not, it's simply neat to see the 78-year-old Kitano continuing to play around with cinematic form so deep into his storied career.