Tadanobu Asano Filmography

Kabei

Actors: Mitsugoro Bando, Sayuri Yoshinaga, Tadanobu Asano

Synopsis: Veteran Japanese filmmaker Yoji Yamada's eightieth feature film concerns a mother living in 1940s-era Tokyo who is forced to care for her two daughters alone after her husband is jailed for expressing reformist views on the Japanese invasion of China. Professor Shigeru Nogami (Mitsugoro Bando) is Read More

The Taste of Tea

Actors: Mayo Banno, Takahiro Sato, Tadanobu Asano, Satomi Tezuka, Tomokazu Miura

Synopsis: Filmmaker Katsuhito Ishii takes a break from the post-Tarantino excess of such highly-stylized outings as Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl for this low-key look at an eccentric family residing in a quiet countryside town just north of Tokyo. The Haruno family is a five-piece clan living the Read More

Sad Vacation

Actors: Tadanobu Asano, Eri Ishida, Aoi Miyazaki, Jô Odagiri, Yuka Itaya, Ken Mitsuishi

Synopsis: A damaged man experiences a series of odd coincidences that send his life careening down a path he never anticipated in director/screenwriter Shinji Aoyama's semi-sequel to his critically acclaimed 2000 drama Eureka. When Kenji was just a young boy, his mother abandoned the family and his father Read More

Naisu no Mori: The First Contact

Actors: Susumu Terajima, Tadanobu Asano, Chizuru Ikewaki, Kazue Fukiishi, Ryo Kase

Synopsis: Taste of Tea director Katsuhito Ishii collaborates with filmmakers Shinichiro Miki and Hajime Ishimine) for this outrageous collection of surreal, short attention span non-sequiturs largely revolving around Guitar Brother (Tadanobu Asano), his randy older sibling, and the pair's portly Caucasian Read More

Hana

Actors: Junichi Okada, Rie Miyazawa, Tadanobu Asano, Arata Furuta, Teruyuki Kagawa

Synopsis: Director Hirokazu Koreeda turns the popularly held conventions of the typical samurai evenge tale on their head with this story of a man whose quest to avenge the death of his father gradually takes a back seat to his emerging role as a key figure in the community. The year is 1702, and young Read More

Eli, Eli, Lema Sabachthani?

The Buried Forest

Actors: Karen, Hiromitsu Tosaka, Tadanobu Asano, Akira Sakata, Taka Okubo

Taga tameni

Invisible Waves

Actors: Tadanobu Asano, Gang Hye-jeong, Eric Tsang, Maria Elena Cordero, Toon Hiranyasup

Synopsis: A hit man takes a vacation and finds both danger and faulty workmanship follow him wherever he goes in this offbeat comedy from Thai filmmaker Pen-ek Ratanaruang. Kyoji (Asano Tadanobu) is a hired killer based in Macau who works for Japanese crime boss Wiwat (Toon Hiranyasup). Kyoji poses as a Read More

Rampo Noir: Mar's Canal/Mirror Hell/Caterpillar/Crawling Bugs

Actors: Tadanobu Asano, Mirai Moriyama, Hiroki Narimiya, Mikako Ichikawa, Tomoya Nakamura

Synopsis: Directors Suguru Takeuchi, Akio Jissoji, Hisayasu Sato, and Atsushi Kaneko team to adapt four stories by acclaimed early-20th Century Japanese mystery novelist Taro Hirai, who penned his suspenseful tales under the telling pseudonym Edogawa Ranpo. Maverick Japanese indie star Tadanoby Asano stars Read More

Bright Future

Actors: Jô Odagiri, Tadanobu Asano, Tatsuya Fuji, Takashi Sasano, Marumi Shiraishi

Synopsis: Acclaimed Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa departs from the horror genre for this mystical story of urban ennui. Friends Mamoru (Tadanobu Asano) and Yuji (Joe Odagiri) are aimless young men stuck in dead-end jobs in a dreary factory in Tokyo. Mamoru, the more antisocial of the two, is obsessed Read More

Last Life in the Universe

Actors: Tadanobu Asano, Sinitta Boonyasak, Laila Boonyasak, Yutaka Matsushige, Riki Takeuchi

Synopsis: A story of two very different people coming together in the wake of personal tragedies, Last Life in the Universe stars Tadanobu Asano as Kenji, a quiet, bespectacled Japanese librarian living in Bangkok. Obsessed with suicide, he meticulously stages ways to kill himself, only to be interrupted Read More

Zatoichi

Actors: Beat Takeshi Kitano, Tadanobu Asano, Michiyo Okusa, Yui Natsukawa, Guadalcanal Taka

Synopsis: Beat Takeshi Kitano directs and plays the title role in this tribute to the wildly popular "blind swordsman" of Japanese cinema who was the hero of more than 20 movies and a television series from the early '60s to the late '80s. In Kitano's version, Zatôichi wanders into a town harassed by Read More

Survive Style 5+

Synopsis: Director Gen Sekiguchi and screenwriter Taku Tada, phenomenally successful award winners in Japan's advertising industry, make their feature-film debut with the fast-paced omnibus film, Survive Style 5+, which incorporates five strange tales that occasionally intersect. The ubiquitous Tadanobu Asano Read More

Vital

Actors: Tadanobu Asano, Nami Tsukamoto, Kiki, Ittoku Kushida, Kazumi Kushida

Synopsis: Japanese body horror auteur Shinya Tsukamoto, still best known in the U.S. for Tetsuo, teams with hipster icon Tadanobu Asano for the psychological drama Vital. Asano plays Hiroshi Takagi, who wakes from a coma, his memory seriously impaired, and decides, to the relief of his parents (Kazuyoshi Read More

Café Lumiere

Actors: Yo Hitoto, Tadanobu Asano, Masato Hagiwara, Kimiko Yo, Nenji Kobayashi

Synopsis: A freelance writer living in Tokyo defies social taboo by choosing life as a single mother in director Hou Hsiao-Hsien's meditative tribute to acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. When Yoko announces that she is pregnant and has no intentions of marrying the father of her child, her Read More

Ichi the Killer

Actors: Tadanobu Asano, Nao Omori, Shinya Tsukamoto, Alien Sun, Sabu

Synopsis: Maverick auteur Takashi Miike spins this unsettling, blood-soaked yakuza yarn adapted from Hideo Yamamoto's cult manga Koroshiya 1. When mob don Anjo mysteriously disappears, his protégé Kakihara (Tadanobu Asano) vows to find the people responsible. Sporting a blond head of hair and a yawning Read More

Watashi No Gurampa

Actors: Bunta Sugawara, Satomi Ishihara, Tadanobu Asano, Mitsuru Hirata, Yoshiko Miyazaki

Synopsis: Yoichi Higashi's Watashi No Gurampa (My Granpa) concerns the relationship between ex-convict Kenzo (Bunta Sugawara) and his 14-year-old granddaughter Tamako (Satomi Ishihara). Kenzo was behind bars for killing a gangster. Upon his release, he goes to live with his son (Mitsuru Hirata), whose Read More

Mizu no Onna

Actors: Tadanobu Asano, Hikaru, Mayumi Ogawa

Synopsis: Woman of Water is set in and around a public bathhouse in rural Japan run by Ryo (UA), whose name means "cool, clear water," and her elderly father. All the major events in her life are accompanied by rainfall, most significantly the day that both her father and boyfriend die in separate incidents Read More

Distance

Actors: Tadanobu Asano, Arata, Yusuke Iseya, Yui Natsukawa, Susumu Terajima

Synopsis: Four people whose lives are connected by a common tragedy discuss the paths their lives have taken in this drama from Japan. Minoru (Susumu Terajima) is a businessman, Atsushi (Araka) is a disaffected post-modern teen, Kiyoka (Yui Natsukawa) is an educator, and Masaru (Yusuke Iseya) a quiet young Read More

Taboo

Actors: Beat Takeshi Kitano, Shinji Takeda, Tadanobu Asano, Koji Matoba

Synopsis: After a 13-year absence, partially due to a life-threatening stroke, master filmmaker Nagisa Oshima returns to the silver screen with this revisionist samurai epic. From his first major film, Cruel Story of Youth to his most notorious work Ai no Korrida, Oshima has coupled the political and the Read More

Gojoe: Spirit War Chronicle

Actors: Tadanobu Asano, Masatoshi Nagase, Daisuke Ryu, Jun Kunimura

Synopsis: Maverick Japanese director Sogo Ishii takes an unexpectedly conventional approach in this screen adaptation of a well-known Japanese folk legend of the 12th century. In the long-standing battle of the Genji and Heiki clans, the Heiki have emerged triumphant, but they find they have a new adversary Read More

Party 7

Actors: Masatoshi Nagase, Keisuke Horibe, Yoshinori Okada, Akemi Kobayashi, Tadanobu Asano

Synopsis: Katsuhito Ishii follows up on his loony, phantasmagoric work Samehada Otoko to Momojiri Onna with this dizzyingly bizarre gangster drama. Low-level yakuza Miki (Masatoshi Nagase) decides that he's had enough of the gangster life and swipes 200 million yen from his boss. He winds up hiding out in a Read More

Kaza-Hana

Actors: Kyoko Koizumi, Tadanobu Asano, Choei Takahashi

Synopsis: Veteran filmmaker Shinji Somai spins this melodrama about an unlikely couple blithely courting their own destruction. Famed pop star Kyoko Koizumi -- also known by her nickname Kyon Kyon -- plays Yuriko, Tokyo pink-salon hostess who after years of sticky fumbling in darkened booths is reaching the Read More

Gemini

Actors: Masahiro Motoki, Ryo, Yasutaka Tsutsui, Shiho Fujimura, Akaji Maro

Synopsis: Shinya Tsukamoto's latest work is a bit of a departure for the director of such over-the-top cult films as Tetsuo: Iron Man (1989). Though punctuated by his trademark kinetic camera work, this moody gothic horror film has the sort of brittle formalism more common in Japanese domestic dramas of Read More

Hakuchi

Actors: Tadanobu Asano, Miyako Koda, Reika Hashimoto, Masao Kusakari, Shunji Fujimura

Synopsis: Director Macoto Tezka's harrowing drama is set in an alternate version of the 1990s in which World War II never ended and the citizens of Japan are subjected to nightly bombing raids. Japanese cult actor Tadanobu Asano stars as Izawa, a lowly production assistant in the corporate monolith Media Read More

Nejishiki

Actors: Tadanobu Asano, Kazuhiko Kanayama, Tetsuro Tanba, Nijiko Kiyokawa

Synopsis: Based on the cult Garo comic by famed manga artist Yoshiharu Tsuge, this film -- directed by veteran yakuza flick auteur Teruo Ishii -- is a hallucinogenic tale about love, death, dreams, and reality. Tsube (Tadanobu Asano) is a down-and-out cartoonist who can't cough up enough money to pay the Read More

Away With Words

Actors: Tadanobu Asano, Kevin Sherlock, Mavis Xu, Christa Hughes, Georgina Dobson

Synopsis: Photographer Chris Doyle, who along with his own still work, has served as a cinematographer for Wong Kar-wai, Chen Kaige, and Edward Yang, makes his directorial debut with Away With Words, a very loosely plotted story that concerns what Doyle has called the two most important things in his life Read More

Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl

Actors: Tadanobu Asano, Sie Kohinata, Ittoku Kishibe, Susumu Terashima, Kimie Shingyoji

Synopsis: Drawing equally from Quentin Tarantino, Hong Kong action spectaculars, Japanese anime, and the over-the-top fashion sensibility of Tokyo's Shibuya district, Katsuhito Ishii spins this dizzying propulsive flick about lovers on the run and the weirdest band of gangsters on the planet. Toshiko Read More

Love & Pop

Synopsis: Following up on his wildly successful 1997 feature-length anime Neo Genesis Evangelion, Hideaki Anno takes digital camcorder in hand and makes his live-action directorial debut with this day-in-the-life drama about a quartet of enjo kosai (school girls) who make big bucks selling their Read More

Labyrinth of Dreams

Synopsis: Veteran indie filmmaker Sogo Ishii spins this dream-like pulpy yarn about death and buses. Tomiko Tomonari (Rena Komine) works as a bus conductress, and though she gets to wear a spiffy uniform, she is thoroughly bored with her job and her life. One day, a new bus driver named Tatsuo Niitaka (Tadanobu Asano Read More

Focus

Synopsis: Satoshi Isaka makes his directorial debut with this psychological thriller and expose on Japan's voracious media. Iwai (Akira Shirai) is a television director with dubious morals and a great suit. Iwai wants to do a piece on Kanemura (played by Japanese Gen-X poster boy Tadanobu Asano) -- a nerdy Read More

Helpless

Actors: Tadanobu Asano

Synopsis: Gen-X auteur Shinji Aoyama directs this brooding gangster flick about alienation, sudden violence, and high school classmates. The film opens with mobster Yasuo (Ken Mitsuishi) getting out of jail only to learn that his gang's don is dead, and that his own future is in doubt. Seething from the bad Read More

Maborosi

Actors: Makiko Esumi, Tadanobu Asano, Akira Emoto

Synopsis: Japanese documentarian Hirokazu Kore-eda made his first dramatic feature with this austere drama, which recalls the visual and narrative style of Yasujiro Ozu. Yukimo (Makiko Esumi) is married to Ikuo (Tadanobu Asano), a happy and humble man who loves her very much. While Yukimo and Ikuo are Read More

Picnic

Synopsis: Director Shunji Iwai follows up on the wild success of his star-crossed romantic drama Love Letter with this slick, brooding tale about a trio of mental asylum inmates and one really long wall. Koko (played by pop icon Chara) is placed into an institution after she embarrasses her rich family by Read More

Fried Dragon Fish

Actors: Tadanobu Asano

Aitsu

Actors: Hikari Ishida, Tadanobu Asano, Ittoku Kishibe

Synopsis: Hikaru is truly an odd duck. He completely expects a flood of the sort described in the Christian Bible to sweep everyone away momentarily. Meanwhile, he hangs out with Sadaro, a very critical friend, who occasionally beats up on him just for fun. One day, after getting whomped on, Hikaru finds Read More