Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#5133
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Kazuki Kitamura works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Kazuki Kitamura appears in 20 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kazuki. Samurai Vengeance is the clearest case: a film rated 8.8 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, screen presence. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, adventure, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Kenji Katagiri, Takashi Minamoto, Yū Irie and others, Kazuki Kitamura helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Samurai Vengeance (2026) · Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) as Crazy 88 #2 · Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) as Boss Koji / Crazy 88
Career snapshot
Ranked #5133 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
20
2003–2026
Career length
23 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.8
Samurai Vengeance
Average Nutevio score
7.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.8
Samurai Vengeance
Most frequent director
Quentin Tarantino
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Quentin Tarantino
Most common genre
Action
10 titles
Average runtime
2h 10m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.4
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
7.0
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2000s
8.1 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Kill Bill: Vol. 2, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
8.1
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.9
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Kill Bill: Vol. 2, Kill Bill: Vol. 1.
Most productive era
2020s
16 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | 7.69 films |
| Action | 8.12 films | 7.72 films | 7.86 films |
| Thriller | 8.11 film | — | 7.02 films |
| Comedy | — | — | 6.83 films |
| Crime | 8.12 films | 7.81 film | 6.84 films |
| Romance | — | — | 7.71 film |
| Horror | — | — | 6.42 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Crazy 88 #2.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
8.8 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once. The current state of the argument.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
20 of 20 films
Directed by Takashi Minamoto
as Shumpei Kusanagi
Directed by Unknown
as Crazy 88 #2
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Samurai Vengeance
Samurai Vengeance (2026)
Performance score8.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The role gives Kazuki Kitamura a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Shumpei Kusanagi
Galileo: Forbidden Sorcery (2022)
Performance score7.9
Galileo: Forbidden Sorcery asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Shumpei Kusanagi is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Crazy 88 #2
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
Performance score7.9
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Crazy 88 #2 is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Ryoji Bento Merchants
Yakushima's Illusion (2025)
Performance score7.8
Yakushima's Illusion asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ryoji Bento Merchants is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
Start here. Samurai Vengeance is the clearest statement of what Kazuki Kitamura does — accessible, 120 minutes, and rated 8.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kazuki at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
Keeps the action register of Samurai Vengeance but asks for a colder reading of it.
Galileo: Forbidden Sorcery (2022)
Keeps the crime register of Kill Bill: Vol. 1 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Yakushima's Illusion (2025)
Same director as Galileo: Forbidden Sorcery, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Samurai Fury (2025)
Keeps the drama register of Yakushima's Illusion but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Quentin Tarantino
Director
3 films together
Notably Kill Bill: Vol. 1
Takashi Miike
Director
2 films together
Notably Sham
Hajime Hashimoto
Director
1 film together
Notably SIGNAL: The Movie – Cold Case Investigation Unit
Hiroshi Nishitani
Director
1 film together
Notably Silent Parade
Nobuhiro Yamashita
Director
1 film together
Notably Let's Go Karaoke!
Shimako Sato
Director
1 film together
Notably The Yin Yang Master Zero
Yū Irie
Director
1 film together
Notably Samurai Fury
Takashi Minamoto
Director
1 film together
Notably Samurai Vengeance
Kenji Katagiri
Director
1 film together
Notably Golden Kamuy -The Abashiri Prison Raid-
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Quentin Tarantino
Director
3 films together · 8.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Kill Bill: Vol. 1Takashi Miike
Director
2 films together · 6.6 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
ShamTakashi Minamoto
Director
1 film together · 8.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Samurai VengeanceYū Irie
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Samurai FuryKenji Katagiri
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Golden Kamuy -The Abashiri Prison Raid-Nobuhiro Yamashita
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Let's Go Karaoke!Hiroshi Nishitani
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Silent ParadeShimako Sato
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Yin Yang Master ZeroHajime Hashimoto
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SIGNAL: The Movie – Cold Case Investigation UnitSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Samurai Vengeance
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning
as Tatsumi
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Samurai Vengeance
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Kill Bill: Vol. 1
as Crazy 88 #2
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Samurai Vengeance
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Kazuki Kitamura has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Career Achievement
Awarded
23 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Action Legend
Awarded
10 catalogue titles in action, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Samurai Vengeance
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Samurai Vengeance
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning
as Tatsumi
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Yin Yang Master Zero
as Korimune Korekuni
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Samurai Vengeance
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Golden Kamuy -The Abashiri Prison Raid-
as Shirōsuke Inudō
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Let's Go Karaoke!
as Matsuribayashi-gumi Head
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Kill Bill: Vol. 2
as Boss Koji / Crazy 88
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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