I think the problem is that a good deconstruction needs to be playful and light on its toes, but Seven Psychopaths felt (to me) like a long bloodyminded slog.

The weird thing for me about that kind of thinking is that studios seem to have gotten a little smarter about counter programming blockbusters and not jamming them solely in the summer or Christmas slots, so that you can actually hope to see some fun escapist movie in early Spring these days.

I’m Japanese American, and here is the problem with your formulation. Japanese Americans - the background of the character here - aren’t the same as Japanese. Japanese immigration largely stopped with the anti-Asian immigration law passed in 1924, followed by the after effects of WW2. Over those 90+ years, there has…

That would be deal breaker for me. Japanese immigation to the US pretty much stopped with the Immigration Act of 1924, and having a non-elderly Japanese American with an accent in a movie set in modern times is really weird. Daniel Dae Kim has been in the US since he was two and sounds like a Californian.

You’re right that there’s more mixing between Japanese and Koreans than either country necessarily wants to acknowledge - although Japanese Americans and Korean Americans tend be a lot less hung up about it.

I think it depends to an extent on the role, so if you were doing a biopic about someone like Gordon Hirabayashi I’d feel as a Japanese American a lot more strongly about a Japanese American actor playing him. In a Hellboy movie, having a Korean American with solid action experience seems fine with me.

He’s Japanese American, and as one I have to break the news that the community has been here for a long time. It’s possible to be Japanese American and have a part of you that is Chinese, Korean, White or Black. I’m Japanese American and I know how tangled our bloodlines can get. And you can add to that the fact that…

Enh. I’m Japanese American and I’m fine with it. People in Japan are far more bigoted toward Koreans, but in the US it’s not such a thing.