Rating: B
Dir: Yûdai Yamaguchi
Star: Tak Sakaguchi, Kohei Fukuyama, Rumika Fukuda, Harumi Kanon
a.k.a. One-percent Warrior
This begins with apparent behind-the-scenes footage of an action film called Birth. In it, creator Takuma Toshiro (Sakaguchi) explains his uncompromising philosophy of martial arts film-making, bemoaning the lack of reality in the genre. He also promotes his own style, called “Assassination-jutsu”. Ten years later, his career has gone nowhere, despite Birth being a cult hit. Toshiro is stuck playing the middle boss in mediocre movies, made by people who do not share his vision, to put it mildly. He has one devoted disciple, Akira (Fukuyama), who helps get a location for a possible shoot of a movie in Toshiro’s style. It’s a disused factory on an island. Except, they find another film crew in place.
Worse, for both productions, is discovering they have landed in a battle between two yakuza factions. The recent death of one boss left a power vacuum. His daughter, Maria (Fukuda) is being interrogated by a rival, Shishido, over the location of two tons of cocaine, supposedly hidden somewhere on the island. The rival film crew flee in terror. But Toshiro? This is exactly the opportunity for which he has been waiting, to prove the superiority of his style, outside of a movie set. What follows is somewhat along the lines of a martial-arts version of Die Hard. Toshiro gradually takes out the bad guys, while occasionally talking to them. They even give him an actor’s name, calling him “Jackie Chan”, because of his fighting ability. [“I prefer Bruce Lee,” Toshiro confesses later]
The resulting fights are stylish (if somewhat contrived on occasion), and good to excellent. The former reaches its peak just after a heartfelt, somewhat mawkish conversation between Akira and Maria, which plays out to a soundtrack of Debussy’s Au Clair de Lune. Then, moments later, the same music backs Toshiro’s battering of a slew of henchmen, by torchlight. Well played, movie: well played. The best sequence, however, sees Sakaguchi going up against Togo Ishii (top), in real life an instructor in Jeet Kune Do. Here, it’s the lack of music which is effective, the bulk of the fight playing out to nothing more than the wind of their limbs whipping through the air.
There are elements to enjoy beyond the brawling. Kanon delivers a scene-stealing performance as Shishido’s one-legged daughter, Ami, who is even more psychotic than her father (albeit for understandable reasons). It’s also littered with in-jokes and references to other films – I’ve a feeling there are probably more, I didn’t spot. Then there’s the ending, which yanks the carpet out from under the viewer, rolls it back beneath their feet, and yanks it out once again. Does it succeed? It would likely require a second viewing to determine that for sure, and see whether it delivers the necessary internal consistency. For now, though, it works well enough to be satisfying. In its multiple levels, it certainly offers more depth than a simple beat ’em up.