kensuke sonomura

Silver Harvest Talks Inspiration, Movies, Action And More With HYDRA Star And Director

Kensuke Sonomura’s feature directing debut, Hydra, is still circulating select film events and screenings. The Coronavirus outbreak may be a factor in its present movement for the time being, but I do know it has a screening pending in Spain last I heard. At any rate, while peddling this amazing thriller to other critics and bloggers for some coverage, I was able to pique the interest of my friends Therese Chen and Takashi Hara in Australia at Silver Harvest who’ve since unveiled both parts of their long-awaited interview with Sonomura-san, and the film’s star, Masanori Mimoto. The film really is a blast being such a concentrated, lo-fi independent actioner. The reactions are very much mixed from those who I know of have seen it given the varying tastes between most fans. I loved the film, and I’m not just saying because I’m friends with both Sonomura and Mimoto. There isn’t […]

HYDRA: Don’t Miss The Latest Domestic Trailer For Masanori Mimoto’s New Killer Role

Lee B. Golden III

I felt it only fair to catch up and share the latest official trailer for Kensuke Sonomura’s new movie, Hydra. The film is due for a November 23 screening release in Japan after circulating several festivals and events including back in April at Hamburg and just recently in New York City’s Urban Action Showcase. Masanori Mimoto makes his latest foray into lead stardom following credits like Ninja Hunter, Bushido Man, and Takashi Miike’s wildly entertaining Yakuza Apocalypse in which he plays frogsuited badass, Kaeru-kun. Jiro Kaneko penned the script for Hydra which centers on a cook at a midnight diner whose past life as an elite killer comes back to haunt him when the rival of his former organization marks them for death. The story is a layered, taut and intense action drama, thickly-crafted with slick, energizing fight action captured by Sonomura in all his burgeoning potential. It’s quite expected […]

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HYDRA Review: A World Roughly Built With A Welcome, Action-Packed Redemption Tale

Lee B. Golden III

It’s already a greatly deserved point of pride for screenfighting and stunt professional, Kensuke Sonomura, that his feature directorial debut, Hydra, is playing a role in proliferating veritable action cinema talent out of Japan within the festival circuit. A byproduct of the Kurata Action Club once upon a time, and the auspices of Re:Born director Yuji Shimomura’s U’den Flame Works, Sonomura comes into his own with a familiar assassin tale that introduces its own new world – one perhaps ripe with potential in many areas if not just one. Screenwriter Jiro Kaneko invites audiences to gaze at the taciturn, stoic, unassuming-yet-imposing veneer of one Takashi (Masanori Mimoto), a restaurant cook with an eye for photographic memory and hands made for much more than his intuitive culinary skillset. In the eyes of his employer, Rina (Miu), and co-worker Kenta (Tasuku Nagase), his culinary precision in memorizing ingredients and food preparation are […]