Although he’s primarily known as a director of thrillers and horror movies, Japanese auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa has never made regular genre flicks. There’s always a twist, aesthetic or otherwise, to the way he approaches his subjects — whether it’s a detective tracking a twisted serial killer in his international breakthrough, , the real ghosts haunting web surfers in , or the heartbreaking family saga in , which revealed how well Kurosawa could direct a straightforward drama. His scripts can be weird and gruesome and over-the-top, but he shoots them like serious art films, which is why he’s become a regular on the festival circuit since the late ‘90s.
His latest Venice-bound feature, , is no exception, mixing action and thriller tropes with a satire about the dangers of online retailing, and perhaps capitalism in general. Skillfully directed but not exactly gripping, it may play better in Japan than elsewhere, while Kurosawa completists will want to add it to their watch lists. At first, Ryosuke Yoshii (the excellent Masaki Suda) is just an average guy trying to make an extra buck on the side of his humdrum day job at a clothing factory.
He buys seemingly unwanted goods in bulk — such as a “therapy machine,” whatever that is — and resells them on an eBay-like website to make a profit off the margin. Basic stuff, right? But this is a Kiyoshi Kurosawa movie, where nothing that seems ordinary ever turns out that way, especially anything involving the internet..