Keanu Reeves Joins Hidari, the Wood-Punk Samurai Revenge Film We Need
Last year, I saw Hidari on YouTube and immediately thought: yeah, this thing has the juice.
A stop-motion samurai revenge movie made with carved wooden puppets? Come on. That’s not a pitch. That’s a dare.
And now Keanu Reeves wants in.
At Annecy, director Masashi Kawamura and producer Noriko Matsumoto pulled back the curtain on the feature version, with Keanu appearing by video to make it official: he loves the project, he loves the ambition, and he wants to be part of the damn thing.
Which makes sense. The guy spent years turning John Wick into a ballet of bullets, blades, and bad decisions. Hidari sounds like that same violent elegance dropped into feudal Japan, then rebuilt out of wood, blood, revenge, and pure handmade madness.
Kawamura’s own description? “Imagine John Wick set in feudal Japan and performed by wooden puppets on steroids.”
Sold.
The story is inspired by Hidari Jingorō, the half-legendary 17th-century master carpenter who may or may not have existed. Nobody really knows. The mystery is the point. People said he could breathe life into wood, which is exactly the kind of folklore that makes stop-motion feel less like animation and more like necromancy with better lighting.
So the filmmakers are going all in. No slick plastic models. No digital cheat code. Every character is carved from wood. Every frame animated by hand. Every grain, nick, scar, and chisel mark becomes part of the movie’s skin.
The plot follows a young master carpenter helping rebuild Edo Castle until a conspiracy takes his mentor, his fiancée, and his right arm. So what does he do? He builds a deadly wooden prosthetic and turns carpentry into combat, carving his way through mechanical soldiers and a giant robot menacing Edo.
The team calls the look “Wood Punk,” which feels exactly right: history, fantasy, sawdust, revenge, and handcrafted chaos.
And in an era where some tech ghoul promises to generate a movie in three seconds, Hidari is doing the opposite. Slowly. Painfully. Beautifully.
A whole movie about craftsmanship, made with craftsmanship.
