J Paul Johnson
So what happens when an amoral, disenchanted protagonist tries to play it both ways in a get-rich-quick scheme? You’ve seen countless noir-ish films where the lead just does that—and it leads him (usually a him) through a labyrinthine maze towards his inevitable doom. But Japanese suspense-maven Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Pulse) knows just exactly how to take a hidebound premise and lather it up in smarts and style. His new thriller Cloud hits all the right beats in a smart, measured thriller taking its mild-mannered protagonist on a wild ride into the dark realm of Japan’s internet black market.
Yoshi (Masaki Suda) is the milquetoast protagonist living a humdrum life in one of his home country’s countless factories, just another headcount employee going through the motions. At least, that is, until he stumbles upon a winning scheme to pilfer a stash of inventory and resell the goods online. It’s a plan that works even better once scaled up, and the more Yoshi sells, the more he makes: it’s enough to invest in his operations, buy an outpost in the country, and set himself up as a highly successful, yet perfectly anonymous black market mogul, buying and selling good so fast none of his clients know if what they’re getting is authentic—or even if they’ll get their product at all.
Yoshi, for his criminal activity, never come across as evil or even meanspirited. From his perspective in Cloud, there are no victims, just random internet usernames overpaying him for the random goods he stocks and sells. He seems more than anything swept along by circumstance but also determined to protect his livelihood. His girlfriend, elated at the prospect of being able to quit her own humdrum job, is all too happy to assist. So is Yoshi’s assistant, a new hire eager to expand the operation and protect its resources.
Having been swept into his black-market entrepreneurship without much forethought, though, leaves Yoshi at the mercy of those he harms. His crimes are, despite what he thinks, not at all without consequence, and the farther his growing empire spreads, so too do the number and ire of those he has wronged. At first the threat looks small, but soon a gang of like-minded thugs is hell-bent on an ugly revenge—it involves a blowtorch and a livestream—and Yoshi finds himself unsure where to turn or whom to trust. Without divulging any spoilers of consequence, let’s just say that both his girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa) and his assistant Sano (Daiken Okudaira) figure prominently in Cloud‘s delightfully bloody climax.
Kurosawa, for his part, gleefully exploits the genre’s key tropes without ever (well, almost ever) kowtowing to cliché. Cloud is first and foremost a genre film, but it’s an excellent one, slowly simmering its conflicts in a spicy stew before the temperature rises to boiling. Suda is a likable-yet-loathsome protagonist, perfectly self-interested but just charismatic enough you’d prefer he succeed at his scams no matter the circumstances. He’s not violent by nature, but put him up against an abandoned-warehouse wall, threaten his life and livelihood, arm him with a handgun, and face him off with a crew of thugs determined to bring him down, and Yoshi will do what’s necessary to survive.
Cloud works so well, in fact, as a modern new-noir suspense thriller, there’s almost nothing to complain about. It’s one of those too-rare films that simply works, from start to finish, set-up to denouement, even one with a great last line to look forward to at its conclusion. Sure, maybe the film’s title—echoing both the intangible qualities of the dark net where the key crimes are committed and maybe the inchoate, loosely shifting nature of the alliances and rivalries between groups and individuals, or something like that, doesn’t quite hold up. No matter. It’s a style thing, and if anyone deserves a little slack in that department it’s Kurosawa, who’s been making smart, sly thrillers like Cloud for decades.
