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. Soon enough, Ryosuke, who uses the online pseudonym “Ratel” (it means “badger” in Japanese but also sounds like “retail”) gets more ambitious, quitting his blue-collar job and investing in a stock of fake luxury handbags on which he hopes to make a small fortune.
Along with his girlfriend, Akiko (Kotone Furukawa), who spends a lot of time moping around but may actually be a devious femme fatale, Ryosuke moves to a lakeside country house that gives him more room to stock his merch — as well as the possibility to hire a young assistant, Sano (Daiken Okudaira), who helps him further expand his business. But things quickly take a turn for the worse, and what started off as a fairly sober salesman movie turns into an action-packed fable on the dangers of getting too greedy. Ryosuke’s many enemies, including his ex-boss from the factory, a former high school friend and rival reseller, and a handful of unhappy online buyers, decide to team up and take their revenge on his semi-successful enterprise.
Shotguns and pistols are fired, people are kidnapped and threatened with torture, the friendly and willing Sano turns out to be working for the yakuza and a brand-new espresso machine goes berserk. Is any of this believable? Not really. Is some of it plain silly? Definitely.
But it’s mostly enjoyable to watch, even if the film flies so far off the rails that there’s less suspense here than in the director’s stronger works. Kurosawa nonetheless applies his typical expertise to the action sequences, staging a long and bloody finale in an abandoned steel mill with plenty of verve, and showcasing his trademark realistic touch in scenes of violence and mild gore. Like many a Kurosawa flick, ultimately sits somewhere between realism and fantasy, shifting from the former to the latter after the first hour, and you have to take what happens to Ryosuke with a fairly large grain of salt.
Whether or not the viewer wants to go along for such a wild ride is another question. Full credits THR Newsletters Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day More from The Hollywood Reporter.
