Mob Machinations Crueler Than Pain The men in Takeshi Kitano's latest yakuza drama, "Beyond Outrage," are not ones for closure. While professionals in less bloody careers try to move from strength to strength, these mobsters in suits tend to move from outrage to outrage as part of their daily business. In this relentless, insular sequel to Mr. Kitano's 2011 hit, "Outrage," actual physical violence is often less shocking than the scheming and betrayal that routinely shake up the traditional hierarchies behind these criminal enterprises. Not that the assassination ending of "Outrage" left any illusions about the limits of loyalty. Once the smoke cleared - and the crime scene was rearranged - the treacherous underboss Kato (Tomokazu Miura) sidled into leadership of the Sanno clan. But new power means a new target, and "Beyond Outrage" picks up a few years later as the gallingly complicit Detective Kataoka (Fumiyo Kohinata) tries to instigate war between the Sanno and Hanabishi families. Kataoka sees his opening: Sanno's silverbacks are frustrated with the bottom-line focus of Kato's younger, bespectacled underboss, Ishihara (Ryo Kase), who once betrayed his former boss Otomo (Mr. Kitano, a.k.a. Beat Takeshi). The detective's hands-on approach to organized crime extends to springing Otomo out of prison early, thus unleashing another warrior with accounts to settle. But if the serial explosive blood baths of "Outrage" suggested a certain human folly, Mr. Kitano's sequel is invested in strategy and negotiation, as yakuza figures shout and goad one another to breaking points, building up the pretenses of hierarchy simply to snap it apart. The most ceremonial of the bosses, Fuse (Shigeru Koyama), can be the most dastardly, and even Kimura (Hideo Nakano), a yakuza who left the game, dives back in with finger-severing gusto. As Otomo, the deadpan superstar Mr. Kitano gives himself the best lines (including the venerable one about being too old for all of this) and an Eastwoodian sense of prerogative. He opens up the film and the filmmaking when he arrives. But for most of the story, "Beyond Outrage" pushes into a fundamentally bleak minimalism with its refrains of aggrieved meetings in plain rooms punctuated by strategic shootings and mutilations. The pattern starts to evoke a long-running soap opera, with alliances instead of affairs, and beat downs instead of sex; there's even a back-from-the-dead figure (Otomo, thought to have perished after a prison stabbing). Another similarity is simply the palpably closed-off feel of Mr. Kitano's compartmental world. The street-level side of the yakuza's endeavors has become an abstraction in its new vaguely defined financial phase, and the film's locked-down locations, purposefully monochromatic palette and repetitively shot face-offs induce a certain stir-crazy exhaustion. That stringency is impressive, and not to be dismissed as a mere misstep, especially considering that Mr. Kitano spent several restless years of filmmaking in the last decade essentially conducting on-screen therapy through stylistic parody and self-reflexive stories. But the strategy and strategizing of "Beyond Outrage" still feel like overkill (if you'll pardon the expression). There's more heart in the film's incidental thug poetry, like the brutal anti-haiku that Mr. Kitano makes out of two jumpy, short-lived hoodlums employed by Kimura. Then again, heartlessness seems to come with the territory. To an outsider's first glance, it's easy to mistake the film's clan meetings for funerals. Mr. Kitano's story of much ordeal and little honor might be better appreciated in repose - a luxury never fully enjoyed by the tale's criminal minds. "Beyond Outrage" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian) for the ritual brutality of gangland warfare. Beyond Outrage Written and directed by Takeshi Kitano; director of photography, Katsumi Yanagijima; edited by Mr. Kitano and Yoshinori Ota; music by Keiichi Suzuki; production design by Norihiro Isoda; costumes by Kazuko Kurosawa and Yohji Yamamoto; produced by Masayuki Mori and Takio Yoshida; released by Magnet Releasing. At the Landmark's Sunshine Cinema, 139-143 East Houston Street, East Village. In Japanese, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. WITH: Beat Takeshi (Otomo), Toshiyuki Nishida (Underboss Nishino), Tomokazu Miura (Chairman Kato), Ryo Kase (Underboss Ishihara), Hideo Nakano (Kimura), Yutaka Matsushige (Detective Shigeta), Fumiyo Kohinata (Detective Kataoka), Katsunori Takahashi (Jo), Kenta Kiritani (Ono), Hirofumi Arai (Shima) and Sansei Shiomi (Nakata).