I haven’t seen Sekigahara or Baragaki: Unbroken Samurai yet, or any of director Masato Harada’s films safe for his screen appearances in The Last Samurai and Jet Li’s Fearless. To that end, it’s no easy thing to mull over how he’s been discussed in recent local Japanese media reports regarding his on-set demeanor, and for better understanding, you’re invited to catch up with actor Yuki Matsuzaki’s own tweet threads discussing it and forging your own opinions from there.
It’s a bit brutal given all else that’s been reported. So to say the least, the better focus here lies on how fond I am of actor Junichi Okada who’s done nothing but deliver the goods in recent memory, with the addition of the aforementioned films and lately with Kan Eguchi’s lean and mean action comedy manga adaptations of The Fable which are currently on Netflix. Okada’s return to the screen now in the new film, Hell Dogs, is nothing short of exciting given what we see in the new teaser above, with Harada adapting the script based on Akio Fukamachi’s 2017 Kadokawa publication.
That screenplay here now sees Okada taking the lead opposite actor Kentaro Sakaguchi (Signal: The Movie, Mask Ward) in this new crime tale as Shogo, a vengeful cop traumatized by the murder of girlfriend, and is given orders to infiltrate the yakuza by initiating through fisticuffs with Hideki, a rogue underling with whom he happens to share a likeness of 98% in psychoanalysis and character traits. The film also stars Mayu Matsuoka (Kiba: The Fangs Of Fiction, Shoplifters), Kazuki Kitamura (The Raid 2, Signal: The Movie, Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning) and Shinobu Otake (Galaxy Turnpike, Sanada 10 Braves), and is set to release in Japan on September 16 from Toei and Sony Pictures.
