Credible action stars are a rare breed in Japanese cinema, but Hideaki Ito is the real deal: tall, handsome and with a rippling athleticism that makes him equally convincing playing a rescue diver, samurai or lumberjack.
He would have been a natural choice for a screen version of “Fist of the North Star,” the classic manga series about a beefcake martial artist fighting for justice in a post-apocalyptic world. As the eponymous hero of Takashi Hirano’s “Kappei,” Ito gets the next best thing — only the setting is today’s Tokyo, and the apocalypse never happened.
He plays one of a group of buff warriors, who’ve been training since childhood for the end of the world. According to Nostradamus, that was due to take place in 1999, but now it’s 2022 and their master (Arata Furuta) abruptly calls it quits, sending his disciples out to fend for themselves.