Bullet Points: One-Percent Warrior

Action star Tak Sakaguchi continues his return to the world of action with a film that is sure to bring action fans to their feet. Tak’s frenetic style of fighting and the almost autobiographical nature of the film will make any action fan salivate at the thought.

Synopsis: A legendary, aging action film star is drawn into the real world of violence when feuding yakuza gangs infiltrate the set of his latest feature. Caught in the middle of a chaotic battle and increasing body count, will his martial arts training be enough to save him?

• The Gist: Tak Sakaguchi is Toshiro Takuma. An action movie star who is described as “hardcore” by those who have worked with him before. For the MMA guys he’s trained with and competed against, he’s the “real deal”. For the Special Forces operator who trains actors for films, he’s legit and would be welcomed amongst his unit anytime. Toshiro’s goal is to make a 100% real action film.

• What’s Goin’ On: While the film does fast-forward roughly a decade, we land back with Toshiro as his career is fading into obscurity. Most won’t work with him and his style just isn’t catching on with financiers. He finally decides that if he is going to be an action star, then he’ll have to do the film he’s been thinking up for a decade. He wants REAL action and he and his protégé begin scouting locations.
• The Action: It’s while scouting a location on an isolated island that they run into a bit of trouble. Rival gangs start shooting up the place and a young woman is thrust in the middle as the crime bosses seek the whereabouts of a couple tons of cocaine. The thought of real battle and the potential to catch it on camera sends Toshiro into action and he starts beating the shit out of mercenaries with little regard for their safety. He’s still not a killer, however, and I can’t say that is the best decision he makes in the film. The action does give us really good opportunities to watch his “Wave Discipline” in action as he flows around the environments using any and all things to his advantage. The action is most certainly the strong point of the film.

• The Bad Guys: The Yakuza are among my favorite of villainous groups that you can put into a film and they offer plenty of chances for henchmen galore. Toshiro runs through a majority of the masked men without much difficulty but he soon runs into a fellow fighter with a similar mentality. The two beat the shit out of one another. You’ll love it! But the real big bads are the father/daughter duo who are orchestrating all of the chaos and the ones who will stop at nothing to get their hands on the hidden drugs.
• The Hero: Tak is very much Tak. It features his style of fighting which is unique to him and it reminds me of a young Steven Seagal. Not so much in the style of martial arts he uses but that it feels very much his own and not just another guy fucking people up. This film spends a little more time inside of his head as he grapples with his career and how best to “paint his masterpiece”, but it also gives him plenty of time to just beat the crap out of masked henchmen with various tools you might find in your garage. Toshiro is like Superman and Batman (I guess) in that he won’t kill so we get plenty of broken bones, but you better believe I would have been slicing throats left and right if I had been in this situation. Toshiro, though, has his own plan as to how this ends and it isn’t exactly what I expected.