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I’m a big fan of the John Wick films, and not only because the professional assassin underworld Keanu Reeves is part of uses pneumatic tubes to communicate important information, like when it’s okay to kill someone.
Given my interest, I was intrigued by the upcoming movie, Karōshi, which is produced by Chad Stahelski. Stahelski oversees the John Wick franchise and is also one of my favorite interviews. (Check out my talk with him about John Wick 4, if that’s of interest!) And so when Lionsgate invited me to an event to get a sneak peek of Karōshi and hear Stahelski and writer-director Takashi Doscher talk about the movie, I happily attended.
Here’s what they said about the film, and my non-spoiler first impression of the clips they shared. You can also watch the trailer yourself, if you want to form your own opinion. Sharpen your blade and get into it!
A “corporate thriller meets samurai revenge story”
Karōshi takes place in a near-future Manhattan that has embraced Japanese culture. Here, large corporations, including one called Ikigai, have shaped not only business, but society as a whole. On the surface, Ikigai looks like any conglomerate seeking corporate excellence. But clips I saw hint that there are cracks in that façade, with something sinister pulsing underneath.
This premise is set up in the name of the movie; Karōshi in Japanese means “death from overwork,” something that’s all too relatable to our present day. “We are feeling disillusioned with corporations, with capitalism,” Doscher said at the event. “I mean, big tech companies promise you ping pong tables and snack bars and unlimited PTO that you're never expected to actually take. And a lot of that is certainly in this film.”
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Based on the trailer, it seems Teo Yoo’s character and his umbrella (and the hidden ninjatō inside) will be the vehicle to bloodily expose Ikigai.
The build up to this violence in the film, however, is gradual. Without getting into specifics, one of the clips we saw introduced us to this world via Isabel May’s Jody, an Ikigai true believer whose steadfastness appears to be faltering after she’s been through some work-related trauma.
As viewers, we piece together the world of Karōshi through her experience; more of an “emotional exposition” as Doscher described it, than a plot-driven play-by-play. Stahelski explained the importance of this approach, especially in movies like John Wick and Karōshi: “The big secret of action is you can do the coolest choreography, anything you want, you can do wires and explosions, but if you don't care about the guy doing it or going through it, it becomes whitewash.”
Isabel May as Jody in Karōshi.
Courtesy of Lionsgate.
A love letter to Japanese cinema
Karōshi modernizes the samurai genre, allowing for more obvious commentary about our world’s current stat of affairs. In that vein, while there are obvious modern touches, those familiar with Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film Rashomon and Masaki Kobayashi’s 1962 feature Harakiri will see their influence here, and not only because these classic samurai movies play with themes of perception and subjective experience.
One (more) modern thing the film doesn’t have, is guns. Doscher explained that one reason for this is that Japan has strict gun laws and he wanted to reflect that. Another, he jokingly added, is that he didn’t want to go toe-to-toe with Stahelski on gun-fu, a genre the John Wick director has reinvented.
I only saw a few clips and the trailer, so I can’t give any assessment of the movie overall. But what Lionsgate showed us looked promising. The cast is also stellar. In addition to Yoo and May, it stars Shōgun’s Takehiro Hira as Ikigai’s CEO, Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo as his second-in-command, Bill Camp (Presumed Innocent), Show Kasamatsu (Tokyo Vice), and Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad) in an unknown role I can’t wait to learn more about when the film comes out on February 5, 2027.
In the meantime, we have this from Stahelski to tease us further: “It's a clever action movie. It’s great worldbuilding. It's something you quite haven't seen. It's very subversive — you think you're gonna see something, and it's not quite what you think.”
Giancarlo Esposito holding an umbrella (a clue!) in Karōshi.
Courtesy of Lionsgate.
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WTF Is This Patent For?!
Here’s an image from a weird U.S. patent. Know what it is or know a good wrong answer? Submit it below and I’ll share the winners next week.
Last week’s image, a long, thin cylindrical device with various springs and a jagged piece inside, inspired a lot of answers. Katie thought it might be a cyanide capsule dispenser; Joan guessed drug mules, and Matt suggested it was a cigar cutter.
I wish all these answers were correct, because the real one is disgusting! To riff on something Admiral Ackbar once said, it’s a tapeworm-trap! It was registered by Dr. Alpheus Myers on November 14, 1854, as “a new and useful Trap for Removing Tapeworms from the Stomach and Intestines.” The trap is “baited” and then swallowed by a fasting patient. Then, Myers writes, “the worm seizes the bait, and its head is caught in the trap, which is then withdrawn from the patient’s stomach by the string which has been left hanging from the mouth, dragging after it the whole length of the worm.” (I should also note that this device likely never even worked.)
I’m sorry you now know this.
Let’s move on to this week’s image. Share your good wrong answers (or even hazard to guess correctly) by clicking the button below!
