A sneaky tale of savagery in the dehumanizing digital age, writer-director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Cloud” is as bleak a warning as you’ll find in theaters this year, cautioning against the corrosive combination of late capitalism, the internet and human nature. Its protagonist, an unscrupulous e-tailer paying a violent price for his own ruthlessness, is so unapologetic that one could debate whether he’s the villain or the victim, but genre maven Kurosawa knows that a redemption arc would be far too trite for a scammer like this.
Masaki Suda is Ryosuke Yoshii, a Tokyo factory worker by day who thrives in his side hustle at night, exploiting desperate suppliers for merchandise he flips on the internet at exorbitant markups. Already detached from society, he’s almost as callous in his relationships with his girlfriend, Akiko (Kotone Furukawa), his eager boss Mr. Takimoto (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa) and Muraoka (Masataka Kubota), his ex-classmate and mentor, as he is with the clients he rips off under the anonymous handle “Ratel” (another name for the honey badger, that oft-memed icon of animalistic indifference).
Portrayed with perfect blank-faced apathy by Suda, Yoshii is a creature of commerce so focused on profit above people that, dressed in clothes the exact shade of cardboard brown as the product boxes that cramp his apartment, he literally blends in with his own merch and only lights up (barely) watching his listings turn into sales. When strange occurrences begin to spook him — a dead rat on the doorstep, a trip wire that topples his scooter, shadowy figures at his back — he’s not self-aware enough to wonder who’s behind them or why. Still, after a deal swindling the manufacturer of medical therapy devices makes him a small fortune, he decamps with Akiko to an isolated country house to expand his online empire, and perhaps shake the mounting sense that someone is out to get him.
Kurosawa (no relation to celebrated filmmaker Akira Kurosawa) is best known internationally for his acclaimed J-horror hits “Cure” (1997), in which everyday people become murderers, and “Pulse” (2001), in which ghosts invade the world of the living via the internet. Even the non-genre films in his prolific four-decade career dissect the quotidian horrors of modern life with rattling accuracy. Directing “Cloud” with sometimes over-deliberate pacing of its superb tension and suspense, Kurosawa crafts a deceptive air of normality. He’s aided by composer Takuma Watanabe’s subtly haunting score and cinematography by Yasuyuki Sasaki that paints Yoshii’s world in earthy blue and green hues, underscoring the notion that his cutthroat drive is as natural as any predator’s instinct.
In this dog-eat-dog world, however, a group of Yoshii’s disgruntled online haters decide to bite back. After building a disquieting atmosphere of dread, Kurosawa jolts into action-thriller mode with terrifically jumpy home invasion frights, a foot chase through the woods and slow-moving shootouts in an abandoned factory, dotting his morality play with a streak of black humor and bloody gunfire as he turns his gaze on the vigilantes who seek to serve Yoshii justice (and live-stream his punishment, naturally).
Throughout the film, Suda’s understated but excellent work thaws Yoshii’s detachment as the precariousness of his situation sinks in, and Furukawa’s turn as the maybe not-so-angelic Akiko, who dreams of a life of wanton spending, is one of the film’s most enigmatic. The scene-stealing performance, however, belongs to Daiken Okudaira as Sano, the baby-faced young local whom Yoshii hires as his assistant and whose enterprising devotion to the job takes its own unexpected turns.
Kurosawa leaves little room for hope in humanity, but his biggest provocation is the grace note of ambiguity he tacks onto Yoshii’s fate. After calling out the retail costs of everything including medical devices (200,000 yen), designer purses (100,000 yen), collectible figurines (200,000 yen) and the monthly rent on Yoshii’s palatial new house (70,000 yen) as he chases his ambitions, the film leaves us wondering most about the price of his soul.
Unrated. At the AFI Silver and AMC Georgetown 14. Contains suspense and bloody gun violence. In Japanese, with subtitles. 124 minutes.
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