CLOUD
(The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran September 5-15 and HtN has you covered once again. Check out M.J. O’Toole’s Cloud movie review. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa has long been fascinated by how technology impacts society. In his new atmospheric thriller, Cloud, his antihero Ryôsuke (Masaki Suda) will soon learn the hard way: you reap what you sow. Japan’s official Oscar entry finds Kurosawa cozily in his wheelhouse, recalling his earlier twisted masterpieces Cure (1997) and Pulse (2001). But instead of diving into the supernatural like those two films, the director’s latest project examines how the world around us drives even the ordinary person into greed and vengeance – with technology playing a huge factor. The script’s unpredictability makes for a riveting psychological satire with some good jump-scares. While every character has an agenda of their own, Kurosawa prepares us for the worst through his own kind of slow-burn dread.
When we first meet our protagonist Ryôsuke Yoshii (Suda), he presses an old garage owner to sell him therapy machines at a rate that is the “best possible offer.” Little does the old man know that Ryô will resell them all on the internet and drive up the prices, or that they will sell out immediately. When he is not working at his clothing factory job, he spends all his time reselling whatever he can get his hands on under the name “Ratel.” Whether it is concert tickets, video games, or limited edition memorabilia, sales profits are all that matter to Ryô. While it should be mundane to watch him witness his products sell out, Kurosawa makes it gripping in a way that makes you feel somewhat attached to his protagonist’s success, even if you’re not blind to how amoral he is.
When he wins big from his most recent sale, his ambition drives him to cut ties with his reselling business partner (Masataka Kubota) and shrug off a promotion from his dejected factory boss (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa). From here, he whisks away his girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa) to a bigger home in the countryside where he hopes to grow his reselling enterprise. But amid his newfound bliss, strange things begin happening around Ryô. A dead rat appears outside his home, a strung-up wire knocks him off his motorbike, and (even weirder) his former boss turns up ominously outside his place in the dead of night. Either these events are pure coincidence, or the beginning of a reckoning that may crumble Ryo’s new existence. Kurosawa expertly instills a creeping sense of unease through the cold, quiet atmosphere that only escalates as the threat becomes more established.
As Ryô devotes himself full-time to reselling, he hires a young assistant Sano (Daiken Okudaira), an overly appreciative young man, to help grow his enterprise. But the more ambitious Ryô gets, the more hot water he unknowingly puts himself in. Unlike the threat of the occult in Kurosawa’s previous works, the main threat facing Ryô is from those who have been wronged by his business. Given a late-night intrusion on his home and threatening comments online, he’s not paranoid for thinking someone is after him. Things eventually do take a turn for the worse as many enemies he has made, including old acquaintances and others who have been wronged by “Ratel,” form a terrifying unit dedicated to making him pay by any means necessary. Bullets are fired, people are caught in the crossfire, and more unexpected players with hidden agendas end up joining the frey. Ryô sinks from mastermind to victim in a way that has us questioning what kinds of “justice” should be inflicted on people like him. The action that transpires in this sequence uniquely mixes edge-of-your-seat John Wick-ian adrenaline with an air of quiet eeriness – something Kurosawa truly excels is an expert at.
Like many Kurosawa flicks, which also have the same style of “Kiyoshiism,” Cloud sits somewhere between reality and fantasy – shifting as the film reaches its bloody, mindblowing conclusion. Ryôsuke is not your usual protagonist – he is a hollow shell of a human who has taken on the philosophy of winning by any means necessary, no matter how much you screw over people. But Masaki Suda’s performance grabs you by the collar and keeps you invested in his character’s tension-filled journey in this cold, quiet world. This is Kiyoshi Kurosawa at the height of his game – making a one-of-a-kind thriller that’s filled with silence, smoldering suspense, and washed-out colors that create a bleak atmosphere. It cautiously reminds us that a world exists where people can easily turn into monsters for a few bucks.
– M.J. O’Toole (@mj_otoole93)
2024 Toronto Film Festival; Cloud; Kiyoshi Kurosawa
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