By Disclaimer: On the very day I put the finishing touches on this draft, a rather informative thread from Japanese film critic Tom Mes went up on Twitter describing a different reality of star Tak Sakaguchi. Not only was he best friends with Sion Sono, a cult film director accused by many women of sexual assault, but he was involved in several incidents over the years.
While I do believe that One Percenter is a solid film made by a team of very talented individuals (specifically action studio Uden Flameworks), the reality is that Sakaguchi’s name and image are integral parts of the experience. Because of this, I completely understand if you want nothing to do with the movie. This article won’t be me trying to convince you to watch it, either.
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I may have ended my long-running ‘Kung Fu Corner‘ column, but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever stop watching and thinking about Asian action cinema. There are still a ton of Hong Kong films I would like to write about for Flixist, but for the moment, we’re going to be looking at something a bit different. Soon to be released on home video in the USA by Well Go USA, the Japanese film One Percenter (here titled One-Percent Warrior… ew) is a rather fascinating musing on the nature of being an action star in a world that thinks it knows better than you.
A recent trend in online film criticism from casual viewers is that they ‘know better’ than the director and writers. A lot of people aren’t watching films to be taken to a different world or experience some new culture, but rather to make themselves feel better for understanding the trick. Possibly due to the rise of popularity in YouTube channels such as ‘CinemaSins,’ these people will view movies and get all high and mighty about how they spotted some shoddy CGI or correctly called out a twist before it happened. The illusion is totally shattered for them.
There has also been a bizarre movement to call out older action stars as ‘fake.’ One of the most surprising claims I’ve seen is that Bruce Lee was not a fighter. Putting aside how his family sent him back to the United States because of how many street fights he was getting into, Bruce Lee’s ubiquity with martial arts didn’t happen because he made a Kung Fu film. The man lived and breathed martial arts from a young age and used its philosophy to live his daily life.
Now, was he a competitive fighter that won various medals? No, and Lee never claimed to be. You can even find interviews with Chuck Norris discussing The Way of the Dragon where he states the same. Lee was something else when it came to skill, but the man never competed in an official capacity. That doesn’t mean he couldn’t kick the shit out of you.
This is similar to the ongoing argument that professional wrestling is ‘fake.’ Anyone with half a brain can tell you that The Undertaker slamming Mick Foley through a steel cage is not fake, but a scripted event. Sports entertainment is very much real, just that the matchups and outcomes are pre-determined. The athletes are putting on a show with a degree of kayfabe that might fool children, but should be fairly obvious to adults… at least, you’d think.
Anyway, what does this have to do with One Percenter? I’m going to throw up the spoiler warning now because discussing the conclusion to this film will ultimately spoil the trick. The movie is enjoyable in its own right and has some solid fight choreography, but its real defining feature is in how it subverts your expectations and puts a spotlight on the work that goes into making an enjoyable action movie.
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SPOILER WARNING
Okay, so, the hook with One Percenter is that a former action star named Toshiro Takuma, played by Japanese action star Tak Sakaguchi (Versus, Re: Born), is fed up with how flowery and balletic action films have become. Wishing to make a film that showcases the truest form of martial arts, he sets off to a remote island to film some hardcore action sequences. While there, he stumbles upon a yakuza gang doing some yakuza shit and manages to get involved with saving a kidnap victim. Yes, this ‘fake’ star is now doing the real thing.
So that’s already a pretty cool hook, but the conclusion takes it even further. During this entire film, which actually has some shades of Die Hard in it, Toshiro is accompanied by his young friend Akira (Kohei Fukuyama). Akira grew up idolizing Toshiro and has wanted to make action films ever since. Toshiro gives him some speech about how only one percent of stars can achieve great status – hence the film’s title – but there’s always something a bit off. It almost appears as if Toshiro is speaking to himself at times, maybe trying to reinforce his own ideology in a world that doesn’t accept him.
As it turns out, that’s because Akira never existed. During the final battle, we watch Akira get shot in the head and see Toshiro fly into a rampage, but then the movie cuts to a director coming in to proclaim the shot successful. You initially think this was a film within a film, but then the rug pull happens. Akira was a figment of Toshiro’s imagination. Toshiro really was there helping this kidnap victim and thwarting the yakuza, but he went solo.
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When that moment happened, my immediate thought was about netizens saying garbage about dead action stars. Tak Sakaguchi has been a relatively big name in Japanese action films for more than 20 years now, but he’s likely heard his fair share of criticisms. I wouldn’t doubt there are people that state he would never be able to hang in a real fight and that his skills are a bunch of bullshit.
On the flip side, there is also a portion of actors that believe their being in action movies makes them certified machines. One of my favorite satires of the last 20 years, Tropic Thunder, deals with this very phenomenon. Ben Stiller actually wrote the movie based on his experience filming Empire of the Sun. Some of his colleagues had gone through boot camp in preparation for the film and acted as if they had been in a real military unit. That divide between film and real life was gone for them.
It’s not hard to assume that Toshiro has some kind of complex, be it an inferiority or superiority one, during the events of One Percenter. His entire arc is that he goes from being a huge action name to a guy providing stunts in films that have completely thrown believability out the window. The film even starts on a set mocking Keishi Otomo’s live-action Rurouni Kenshin films for their unrealistic movement and overuse of the slide technique.
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Real-life Tak is known for being a badass. Much like Bruce Lee, Tak was involved in underground street fights before entering the film industry. He also performs all of his own stunts and has a penchant for pushing the envelope when it comes to danger. In a lot of ways, Toshiro in One Percenter is an insert for Tak Sakaguchi, embodying a lot of the same traits. They both want more realistic fight choreography and will put themselves in precarious scenarios to get it.
The key difference is that Tak isn’t totally out of his mind. He understands that safety precautions on set aren’t some failing of the industry and he doesn’t look down on directors and choreographers for using fantastical staging. Movies are a trick, in and of themselves, so even the most ‘realistic’ of fights is going to be planned out. One Percenter even kind of admits this during a final brawl between Toshiro and an unnamed Jeet Kune Do fighter played by real-life expert Togo Ishii. The fight starts with no background music before slowly adopting some classical tunes. It plays out like a ballet.
It’s really in the final statement by Toshiro that the entire philosophy of One Percenter becomes clear. We all have our own preferences when it comes to what we enjoy about films, but one thing is true: action stars are real performers. They may not be winning UFC bouts or battling thugs on the streets, but these people put their bodies on the line to create entertainment for us. If they didn’t have any talent or skills, these films wouldn’t wind up looking as amazing as they do.
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There is a portion of the audience that understands and even respects this aspect. Look no further than modern wrestling fans who are very much aware of the behind-the-scenes workings of the business, but love to see the matches play out. Sure, it’s incredibly unlikely that someone as old as Sting could actually fight anyone, but that’s not the point. He goes out there and sells an image that requires a skill most people do not have. At the same time, he is also in solid physical shape and is able to take bumps that would make the average person crumble.
The same could be said for Tak Sakaguchi. While he has actual street fighting experience and would likely fuck you up if you tried to hit him, he’s not on set destroying his co-workers. He’s working with them to teach them how to properly film a fight so that it looks flashy and entertaining. He’s also gambling with his safety to produce sequences that will dazzle audiences. Comparing that to a competitive fighter is missing the entire point of what films are and what action stars do.
All of this is likely obvious to people who have an appreciation for what film can achieve. If you accept that film is selling you a fantasy and are simply there to see some cool stuff, you likely don’t care that Bruce Lee appeared almost indestructible in his movies or that Tak Sakaguchi cannot dodge bullets in real life. Hell, John Wick is 1,000% this and people love those films. These movies are presenting you with an ideal scenario where these characters are beyond reality (which is actually what Chinese wuxia films were all about).
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On the flip side, real people are using their real bodies and employing real skills to make these films. Maybe there are some shortcuts taken because realism is abandoned, but that doesn’t mean a person strapped to wires isn’t 100 feet in the air. If those wires break, they aren’t going to somehow survive the fall. I’m pretty sure when Tom Cruise was scaling the Burj Khalifa in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, he wasn’t casually doing it as if there was no real danger.
It’s rare for me to leave an action film pondering the very nature of what action films are. One Percenter is a cool premise more than a thoroughly engaging story, but the metaphors presented for what action films are makes it utterly captivating. Director/Writer Yudai Yamaguchi certainly understands that action stars aren’t pushovers or phonies and I’m happy that he created something to acknowledge that.
