One-Percenter

One-Percenter (1%er, 2023) is a Japanese action film you can watch online on iFILM. Directed by Yuudai Yamaguchi, starring Tak Sakaguchi.

Sakaguchi is a genuine martial artist playing a version of himself: a once-celebrated action star, a decade past his last hit, grinding through bit parts in wire-fu samurai pictures where nobody throws a real punch. He cannot stand it. His conviction is that screen combat should look the way fighting actually looks — fast, economical, finished in seconds. He talks a producer into funding a comeback project and flies out to scout an abandoned island factory for the shoot.

The island already has occupants. Two feuding yakuza factions and one of Japan's most dangerous fighting men, a martial arts assassin who has no reason to be accommodating. Yamaguchi shoots this meta-action comedy with a straight face and genuine violence — the fights are fast, unglamorous and over before the stunt coordinator would have called cut. Watch One-Percenter online on iFILM.