General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Wasabi (2001 film)

Wasabi is a 2001 French action comedy directed by Gérard Krawczyk, written and produced by Luc Besson, and starring Jean Reno, Ryoko Hirosue, Michel Muller, and Carole Bouquet. It was released in France on 31 October 2001¹^•². In France it circulated under the expanded title Wasabi, la petite moutarde qui monte au nez ("the little mustard that goes up the nose", a French idiom for sudden irritation)³.

Key fact	Detail
Director / writer	Gérard Krawczyk (director); Luc Besson (screenplay and producer)²
Cast	Jean Reno (Hubert Fiorentini), Ryoko Hirosue (Yumi Yoshimido), Michel Muller (Momo), Carole Bouquet (Sofia)²^•⁴
Countries / languages	France and Japan; French and Japanese²
Runtime / release	94 minutes; France 31 October 2001, Japan 2 February 2002²^•⁵
Box office	$10,366,360 worldwide, including $6,656,489 in France and $1,329,252 in Japan⁵
Critical scores	44% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (41 reviews) with a 69% audience score; Metacritic Metascore 53; IMDb 6.6/10 from about 46,000 votes⁶^•⁷^•⁸

Spoilers

Plot

Hubert Fiorentini, a Paris police commissaire with a soft heart but violent methods, punches his way through a nightclub arrest without realizing that one of the people he hits is the son of the Prefect; his superior, le Squale, puts him on paid leave⁹^•¹. News then reaches him that Miko, a Japanese woman he loved 19 years earlier and who left him without explanation, has died in Japan in strange circumstances²^•⁹.

In Tokyo, Miko's lawyer, Ishibashi, reads her will: Hubert has inherited guardianship of Yumi, an eccentric teenager he never knew existed, for the two days remaining before she reaches adulthood⁹. Yumi thinks she was conceived when her mother was raped and then left, and she despises the father whom she has never seen⁹. Yakuza pursuing money stolen by Miko turn the two days into a running fight, with Hubert protecting his daughter while the film moves through Tokyo streets, a shopping-mall shootout, and a nightclub dance-game scene¹⁰. Besson's synopsis frames the inheritance itself as the hook: Miko left him something, and "it's more than a gift: it's a bomb"².

Production and Tokyo shooting

Besson, who had founded EuropaCorp, wrote the screenplay and produced; he assigned the direction to Gérard Krawczyk, whose Taxi 2 (1999) for Besson's company had made him a busy director¹¹^•¹. Wasabi was EuropaCorp's third release of 2001, following Yamakasi and Le Baiser mortel du dragon, and marked Jean Reno's first appearance in a Besson film since Léon seven years earlier¹²^•¹¹. Éric Serra composed the score with Julien Schultheis².

Shooting in Japan drew particular attention at the time. The film was publicized as the first work to make full use of the Tokyo Location Box, a support program for film shoots in Tokyo created on the initiative of Governor Shintaro Ishihara¹³. Location record-keeping later noted that the street the film presents as Shinjuku was actually shot in Akihabara, that Hubert's arrival at Narita International Airport was filmed there, and that Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto also appears among the filming locations¹⁴. Japanese accounts of the film also highlight Ryoko Hirosue, a Japanese pop idol and actress cast opposite Reno, who bleached her hair blonde and delivered her French dialogue fluently on screen¹⁵.

Release and box office

Released in France, Belgium, and Switzerland on 31 October 2001, Wasabi rolled out across Europe and Asia over the following eighteen months, reaching Japan on 2 February 2002 and the United States on 27 September 2002²^•⁵. Trade reporting at release called it a hit start: AlloCiné reported that it recorded the best opening of the moment in Paris and its region and in France, and counted it the third success for the Europa label that year¹². In its first Paris week it drew 118,929 admissions, about 46 percent of its Paris-and-periphery total of 256,064¹⁶.

The worldwide gross was $10,366,360, of which France accounted for $6,656,489 and Japan for $1,329,252; the North American release was small, grossing $97,220⁵. Against a stated budget of $15 million, the theatrical run did not recover its production cost⁹.

Reception

Critical reception was mixed. The film holds a 44% score among 41 critics on Rotten Tomatoes against a 69% audience score, and a Metascore of 53 on Metacritic, classified as "mixed or average"⁶^•⁷. Reviewers singled out the leads. Jami Bernard of the New York Daily News described it as "like a Hollywood buddy-cop movie gone through a multi-culti blender", and Megan Lehmann of the New York Post credited Reno's "deadpan cool, wry humor and just the measure of tenderness required to give this comic slugfest some heart"⁷. Roger Ebert gave it 1.5 out of 4, writing that Reno "does what he can in a thankless situation"⁶. On IMDb the film holds a 6.6/10 rating weighted from roughly 46,000 votes⁸.

A recurring observation among critics, in English and Japanese alike, is the film's willful unreality: nearly every Japanese character speaks fluent French for no explained reason, a liberty the Japanese trade press also noted with amusement¹⁰^•¹⁷. Japanese commentary framed the film's appeal around its stars, arguing that Reno's awkward stubborn cop, Michel Muller's comic sidekick Momo, and Hirosue's volatile 20-year-old heroine carry a simple, forceful story that its stedicam shooting and action otherwise keep moving¹⁷.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026