This film has got me all hot. I’m not familiar with the star’s, Tak Sakaguchi, previous work. This film seems to reference his early stuff. But I’ll interpret this film as a standalone.

I think there are two ways to see this.

1).  A parody of a bad action film.  

One Percenter comes complete with all the tropes.  An older, doughy, star no longer willing or physically able to perform anything interesting.  Bad choreography.  Campy villains.  Involvement of dubious real-life personalities.  Poor and abandoned plot lines.  A sense that the entire production is just a way for the male lead to live out some sort of macho fantasy.

If this is truly a parody, it is masterfully done.  In Tak Sakaguchi’s performance, I hear whispers of Steven Segal.  

Unfortunately, I think it is much more likely that the film is just…

2).  An unironic, honestly bad, boring movie.

We are given a protagonist.  A character once lauded for his realistic action choreography and his martial arts prowess.  We are not shown these attributes.  We are told.  The movie opens with faux interviews of past opponents and teachers each extolling the prowess of the lead.    

By the way, one of these testimonials is from someone who is apparently a real-life instructor of the star.  The teacher is shown larping in fatigues and demonstrating what many would describe as RBSD, reality-based-self-defense, or some sort of military combative knock-off.   

We get a demonstration of the martial art by the star himself shortly into the movie.  A guard called ‘the wave’ that is just as gimmicky as the ‘thinking-man’ of the Keysi method, but with even less justification.  A cringe-y reference to something called assassination-jutsu.  And the main character does his own version of the one-inch-punch, proving once again that if someone stands with their feet parallel it’s really easy to knock them over.    

But we see more than that during the short training sequence.  We see a man with a dedication to martial arts and presenting it faithfully on screen.  We see that you can dodge bullets if you just know how.  Wee see Tak Sakaguchi’s muffin top, thankfully to be covered for the rest of the film by a baggy black hoody.  And we see a young disciple so inconsequential that we don’t even care when he is revealed to be a figment of Tak’s imagination.  

MC and imaginary sidekick make their way to a secluded island, the backdrop for the film’s conflict, and run into some expendable side characters.  When gangsters make a murderous entry, there is not a genuine reaction in the bunch.  

We are given a very loose justification for why the MC stays to fight when it would be so easy to flee.  From the trailers, I got the impression that he would film his encounters with the yakuza and use that as his true-action masterpiece.  But unfortunately, the actual plot line is not so straightforward.  Instead, he will stay, fight, film, and then…?  Use it for inspiration later?  It’s not really clear.  

The enemy combatants are forgettable.  All armed with assault rifles, but all too ready to set them down and fight with knives.  We can’t shoot here, there’s a sign that says ‘flammable’!  We can’t shoot, he has one of our guys by the throat!  Everyone, line up to fight him one at a time!

All we get from the middle section are some vanilla gun and knife disarms.  Assassination-jutsu seems a cheap rip-off of CQC from the Metal Gear franchise.

The only memorable villain is the one-legged daughter of the big-bad.  She at least shows a little emotional complexity.  But her motivations and reactions feel very familiar when she encounters the object of her obsession, the damsel in distress.  

The climactic showdown is not enough to justify the lackluster lead up.  The final opponent, a fellow martial artist to the MC, is everything the male lead should have been.  Mysterious, dynamic, fit, skilled.  The only interesting techniques are all shown by our antagonist.   The MC only does damage passively; the villain injures his foot when the MC blocks a kick using his elbow.  Other than that, Tak’s character only scratches his opponent’s face before they exchange one-inch-punches.  

A cliche sacrifice, a pointless plot twist, and we are wrapping things up.  Some police interviews at the end do little to explain the mess we have just witnessed.  But it gives the lead a chance to express his laughable opinion, that good action stars are … warriors?  This ending scene is the only thing that makes me unsure whether this is meta-parody or just bad cinema.  The last lines are such self-gratifying gibberish for the lead that I doubt a rational person could give that performance, then utter those words with a straight face. 

Conclusion:

I won’t make an argument about whether this is a bad film or a masterful commentary because at the end of the day it doesn’t matter.  Either way, it is unpleasant to watch.  So why am I so fired up over what could just be another B-movie?  Because it makes a point of taking a stance on the martial arts/action genre.  The character decries bad action choreography then demonstrates nothing but bad choreography.   

I also think the initial premise is flawed.  The MC derisively compares other action films to dance.  An early foil counters by saying that audiences want fantasy.  A quickly killed off director wants his actors to move more like dancers.  We are supposed to scoff at him for this.  But at the end of the day, these characters are closer to the truth than the MC.  Real fist fights are mostly awkward wrestling between drunk fat guys.   Gun fights are short, violent, and loud.  Do we want to see the reality of it?  Or do we want to see the dance, where performers make skilled and athletic movements across the stage?  We just want to see Bolshoi, not the local community theater’s production of “The Nutcracker”.