What is it about Asian martial arts stars and repeated announcements of retirement? When he was promoting Fearless, Jet Li spoke of potential retirement and the movie being his final martial arts movie... and he has of course continued to make countless martial arts and action movies since. Jackie Chan, who turned 60 earlier this year, has been talking about potential retirement since the late 80s when, as noted in The Best of the Martial Arts Movies, he spoke of trying to find a successor so he could step back and concentrate on being a director. Chan continues to act and direct and is currently hard at work on Dragon Blade with Skiptracer set to follow.
Sammo Hung actually announced his retirement in the late 90s and it was during his retirement that he ended up shooting the pilot for - and then the subsequent two seasons of - Martial Law. Sonny Chiba announced his retirement a few years back, but that doesn’t seem to have slowed him down in any way either. Tony Jaa announced his retirement from the entertainment world to become a monk, only to return to the lime light a few weeks later.
Just over a year ago cult Japanese martial arts and action hero Tak Sakaguchi, who is probably best known for Versus, Death Trance and Battlefield Baseball announced that he was retiring... which left several projects in limbo including announced sequels for Death Trance and the much discussed Versus sequel.
Now thanks to longtime associate Yuji Shinomura (whose credits include Versus, Death Trance and various Donnie Yen projects including Der Puma, Flashpoint,) comes the announcement that Tak will be coming out of retirement for at least one project, the aptly titled RE-BORN.
According to Tak: "After I retired, I found myself having a passion for action that was still smoldering inside of me. After a conversation with action director Yuji Shimomura, I wanted to thrive one more time and create the very last and most superb action movie with my utmost power and passion for the sake of a closure to my entire career. I am convinced that I have to give my very best one last time. That is how I feel about this project. I didn’t realize how many people chose to support a person like myself until after I retired. I hope this movie will be satisfying enough for them to feel absolutely alright for me to go. This is for them.”
RE-BORN is set to shoot in 2015, so we still have some time to wait, but we can get a glimpse of Tak stepping out of retirement in some high impact action... and Ryu Kitamura director of Versus continues to claim he will have Tak back in action for the long awaited sequel to their best known work.
Tak Sakaguchi showcase:
