Tag: Sakaguchi Tak

One-Percent Warrior (2023, Yamaguchi Yudai)

The One-Percent in One-Percent Warrior’s title does not refer to the super-rich, but rather when someone transcends in their film-related martial arts excellence. The majority of the film is just a forty-minute action sequence with star Sakaguchi Tak roaming around an abandoned zinc factory—on its own little CGI island—and kicking various butt. A lot of it is the same butt. It was in the second or third big beat-down I realized all of the bad guys have their faces covered so they can keep getting beaten down.

But forty minutes isn’t a movie, so Warrior’s has a very complicated story tacked on.

The movie opens with documentary interview footage about how Sakaguchi’s such a badass; even though he’s just an action movie star, he can kick his special forces buddies’ asses too. He can dodge bullets. Sakaguchi doesn’t necessarily get a lot to do in the film—even when he’s got the big reveal, which I’ll dance around later—he doesn’t do a lot. But he manages to make the bullet dodging believable.

And he’s socially awkward enough you can believe it when he can’t hold a steady job. His latest gig is on a period piece where he very quickly mouths off too much and gets fired. On this particular job, however, he meets Fukuyama Kohei, who thinks Sakaguchi’s an action god. Fukuyama becomes Sakaguchi’s sidekick and trainee, listening to Sakaguchi talk about his martial arts and his dream of the perfect action film.

So much talking.

Fukuyama convinces Sakaguchi to try to get funding, which leads them to the abandoned zinc factory island. They’ve got to find a location, after all. There, they discover another film crew already scouting the same location. Before that scene even finishes, Warrior adds the next plot wrinkle—they’re both scouting a location where a dead mobster hid his cocaine and now one set of bad guys has brought the dead mobster’s daughter (Fukuda Rumika) to find it.

Except… there’s also another set of mobsters who want the cocaine, so they’re trying to kill those gangsters without hurting Fukuda. They’ve got other gangster’s daughter Harumi Kanon with them. Harumi’s a vicious killer, not naive like Fukuda, so there’s a whole juxtaposition thing.

Fukuyama will end up bonding with Fukuda, but there’s no payoff for it, which stinks because Fukuyama’s really likable in the scenes. It also stinks because it plays into the third act reveal, which part and parcel lifts one of the more famous movie twists from the twentieth century. While Warrior uses the twist just to get to stop the movie—it’s very low budget, and they do a lot with that budget, but there’s a limit, and they do hit it multiple times—but the twist also suggests there’s all sorts of character development they could’ve done but didn’t. Even within the constraints of the established format (the documentary interviews and so on).

It’s a real bummer because Warrior overcomes a turgid first act to actually get moving once the action starts. Sakaguchi can obviously do his job, but Fukuda, Harumi, Fukuyama—they all come through. Even the gangsters are solid. Warrior goes into the finale much stronger than expected, albeit because we’re worried about characters we may or may not need to be worried about, but still. Warrior’s second act rally is significant.

And then it all crashes down.

Versus (2000, Kitamura Ryuhei)

So, watching Versus, I realized a few things. First, Kitamura is probably the best action director… ever. Second, he can’t write his way out of a hat. Third, he’s also a great director of actors. Versus, for the superior first forty minutes, has a lot of characters in frame, doing a lot of things, not just action, but also just exuding personality. Kitamura does a great job with it.

It’s not just his shot construction, of course. It’s the way he moves the camera. He only does it in the first forty, but it’s a fantastic system for informing the viewer of what’s going on–where people are standing, where they’re moving. There’s so much good in Versus, which is incredibly hard to believe considering it’s described as Evil Dead meets The Matrix. Unfortunately, like I said, all that goodness is technical (some of the performances are excellent, however).

The writing falls apart, but then it breaks down more and more. Whenever Kitamura feels the pace slowing, he introduces more characters. We start with eight, which quickly becomes six, then he introduces three more, then another, then another two. The last additions are these asshole cops who are supposed to be funny, and to some degree they are–and it’s really interesting that one makes the (intentionally) geographically incorrect remark that he grew up in Yellowstone National Park in Minnesota, but the American DVD company subtitled it to Canada. Not surprising, that Japanese people have a better awareness of U.S. geography than American DVD aficionados.

Kitamura, as a writer and somewhat as a director (he keeps twirling the lead’s leather trench coat), is seemingly obsessed with “cool.” Versus is a film dictated by “wouldn’t it be cool if…” which is no way to tell a good story, but there wasn’t one anywhere in Versus, thankfully. It just got worse than it needed to get.

Had I seen Versus before Azumi, I might have shut it off (though probably not, as the opening forty are incredibly well-directed), but I certainly would never have found Azumi. Azumi is a good movie.

All Kitamura needs is a good script–which means he shouldn’t touch it.