In this genre-bending thriller, an online reseller’s tale of vengeance becomes a parable of human greed and disconnection.
Just as Yoshii (Masaki Suda), sitting on the bus with his girlfriend, is beginning to dream about a better future early on in “Cloud,” the camera gradually inches over, and the outline of a dark figure suddenly hovers over him. Things go deathly quiet and Yoshii turns, but the figure has dashed off the bus.
It’s the kind of breathtaking moment you’d expect from the writer and director Kiyoshi Kurosawa whose breakout masterpiece, “Cure” (1997), showcased his virtuosic control of tension and atmosphere. That consummate formal ability has one ready to follow the eclectic Japanese auteur wherever this taut suspense might take us, even if, in this latest work, it might end up in some disjointed directions.
Here, Kurosawa’s story of what might initially appear to be sinister morphs boldly and almost irreverently into a tale of slapstick vengeance that carries with it whiffs of Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games” and Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs.” Underneath all that is perhaps something sinister still, though not from an expected place.
As an online reseller who poaches just about any product he can find to sell at a higher price, Yoshii has recently had a windfall, selling a batch of medical devices. He quits his factory day job and moves to a house in the woods with his girlfriend, hoping to expand his business. Yet, eerie instances have him looking over his shoulder, and his dubious reselling practices begin to attract enemies.
The gears switch hard in the film’s second half, as Yoshii’s karmic retribution comes knocking. But the gunslinging that ensues is not slick nor even particularly gruesome. This is the story of desperate men, pummeled by failure and itching for violent catharsis; although mostly what they get is clumsy death.
That incongruence, in the movie’s eyes, embodies the distinction and friction between the digital world and the real one. Online, everyone represents either cash to be made (at seemingly every turn of real and present danger, Yoshii is still just thinking of his rinky-dink hustle) or a scapegoat for one’s anger. But in the physical world, those visions of revenge play out differently. Often, at decisive moments, these characters take on the persona of a villain, shouting out their machinations like they would on an online forum, only for reality to bluntly knock them over the head.
It’s a surprisingly funny film in that way, but also disturbing. For all of his genre-bending on display, Kurosawa is interested in something more real and more dark about humanity’s capacity for greed and bitterness, and the quiet ways that the internet can further mutate those diseases in us.
But that subtext gets muddled in the director’s primary desire to construct playful surprises, even if some of which, particularly by the end, can be wonderfully, terrifyingly strange. Ultimately, “Cloud” is constructing a highway to hell for Yoshii in which the demons are not phantom, but us.
Cloud
Not rated. In Japanese, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 4 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
