One Percenter

This is a very different movie. I can see how the filmmakers were indeed trying to be creative in its approach from the perspective of an 'Action Film Star'...

There is some pretty rough dialog throughout that is both intentionally and unintentionally funny in a quirky kind of way. I thought the main guy was pretty cool and played his part well. But, the acting overall is not what you would call the very best, and that's putting it kindly.

I guess the unusual setup and the fight choreography particularly towards the end with the two main Good/Bad guys is what keeps one's interest mostly. But, the script, such as it is, kind of brings the movie down a little.

You have to hand it to the imagination behind some of these films, they do indeed come up with some truly out of left field twists towards the end, which I felt in this case were fairly effective.

I liked the two different fighting styles of the Good/Bad guys at the end. The Bad guy was very much like Bruce Lee, very 'Still' very precise, VERY fast! The Good guy using his Wave technique was more fluid. So, it was rather fascinating watching how their totally different fighting styles worked together.

I would say that overall it is an okay movie, fun in parts, with an unusual premise. To me personally, the ending 'Twists' add another point because of their clever and somewhat vague nature, thus my '6' rating...

Definitely flawed, but if you get into it, it does hold your interest for all these quite disparate reasons.

This one was a tough one to score... on paper it has everything to tick the right boxes but the poor execution of the fights was crucial to find itself in the mediocre range. Writer and director Yûdai Yamaguchi just chew a bite too big to swallow... so, at the end kept it in his mouth, I guess.

For Tak Sakaguchi's performance... I have to say: very poor... he is known to be skilled in Bajiquan, Shaolin Kenpo, boxing, kick boxing, and mixed martial arts, and what he demonstrated here was just a choreography the main character in this film was so much against. If you are criticizing somthing, please, do it better ... or at least different...

Nice to see Tak with another one of his action flicks, this time about an Action star actor that struggles with working alongside the film industry's crew on an action scene, fed up of all the exaggerated fantasy fights that's in trend, he took it upon himself to pitch his semi-realistic action flick to many of the top directors (ironically called One-percenter), his character also practices the art of Zero-range combat along with his past film, Re: Born. His character negotiated with the director to film at the abandoned warehouse as the film's location for his next flick, coincidently his former film crew turned rivals were using the same location along with the militarised Yakuza chasing down a mob leader's daughter in the same location, this is where thing's kick off and Tak takes advantage of the situation to turn this action flick into a reality and asked his trusty side-kick to film the whole thing.

At first the film could've worked, but unfortunately the plot was pretty simple, although the action sequence was cool, at least more unarmed fights in this film compared to Re: Born, but I feel like Re: Born was better in plot. I also notice you won't be seeing Tak using a knife in this film, but he utilises other objects as weapons.

Overall: This film isn't spectacular, but it does have it's moments in the action sequences and funny support characters.