Upon one’s conclusion, it’s always fun to realize that a movie gave away its principal theme within its first 10 minutes. In the case of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud, his second great film of 2024 after his 45-minute NFT, Chime – and yes, you read that right – the reveal comes when Yoshii Ryosuke (Masaki Suda) arrives at a garage in search of a large collection of “miracle therapy devices,” which he hopes to buy on the cheap and then resell online for 10-times the purchase price. Whether or not it’s a particularly honorable practice isn’t much of a question; it’s just a fact that this is how Yoshii makes most of his cash. When he continues to low-ball the owners, they question why he wants their machines so badly. He’s (somewhat) honest in his response, but they can’t seem to understand how he can guarantee that they’ll sell. “You just operate on impulse and instinct? No effort whatsoever?” Yoshii shrugs them off. Within a few hours, he’s made a few million yen.
Impulse, instinct, and perhaps not no effort, but little whatsoever beyond a few clicks of a button and whatever a human being has to muster within them to not care whether or not they’ve hurt another with their blithe attitude. That’s what Yoshii has done in order to be considered successful, and that’s what lands him in hot water with just about every eBay user in Tokyo. With Cloud, Kurosawa takes his dark curiosities with crime and violence, and how willing we are to go about committing them, and modernizes them in the interest of pertaining to a technology-obsessed world. What begins as a slow-burning thriller about cheating those who are undeserving gradually evolves into a rip-roaring shoot-em-up as only Kurosawa could envision one.
Yoshii’s obsession with flipping sometimes-useless products for a hefty profit is apparent from the moment the film begins, and Kurosawa – never one to waste any time – uses its first half to lay the necessary groundwork for his tale before sending it swiftly off the rails (complimentary). His “protagonist,” if you can even call him that, lives in a poor excuse for an apartment that looks more like an inventory closet with a bed, perhaps because that’s exactly what he uses it for. Yoshii’s girlfriend, Akiko (Furukawa Kotone) drops by every now and again, blissfully unaware of the reality of her beau’s transactions, a practice Yoshii treats like a gambling degenerate’s approach to Blackjack: “That next spin around the wheel is bound to see the ball land on red,” et al.
Quitting his job at a clothing factory and turning down an offer to go in on an online resale website with an old friend he calls Mr. Muraoka (Masataka Kubota) is equivalent to hitting the jackpot, then, as Yoshii’s indifference toward participating in anything that doesn’t directly benefit his bottom line inspires him to rent a lake house outside of the city. The quasi-mansion soon becomes the home of Yoshii’s solo venture; he hires an assistant, Akiko moves in with him, and feels as though things are looking up. He purchases a few dozen knockoff handbags and a line of collectible dolls, puts them up for resale, and watches with bated breath as a handful of gullible online shoppers pull the trigger, shooting wads of cash straight into Yoshii’s bank account. Life is good.
Leave it to Kurosawa to literally launch a car engine through Yoshii and Akiko’s bedroom window, sending shattered glass across the room and paranoia through Yoshii’s mind. When a cursory Google search from his assistant Sano (Daiken Okudaira) reveals that a group of message board users, all of whom were screwed over by Yoshii’s inflated prices and faulty merchandise, are plotting their revenge against the seller they know as “Ratel,” he sends up a distress flare. The ever-arrogant Yoshii shrugs him off, too; he has money to make, after all. But this threat is not the first to show up on his doorstep. First, there was a dead rat. Then came the trip-wire into which he almost scootered. Before long, intruders themselves give chase, sending Yoshii on the run with no place to hide.
It’s in these kinds of situations where Kurosawa has his most fun, if you will: Lodging his characters in tight spots that seem inescapable on levels both physical and psychological, and forcing them to endure such prisons for extended periods of time. In Cure, he placed the film’s detective, Kenichi Takabe, between an investigative rock and a hard place, leaving him to lose his own mind as he fails to properly deal with a memory loss-addled murderer and his schizophrenic wife. In Pulse, Kurosawa’s first internet-focused thriller, he operated similarly to how he paces Cloud, letting the anticipation build to a point where you’re actively clamoring for the film’s characters to escape their ghostly environment before it’s too late. (Spoiler: It was always too late.) Even in Chime, a short, the Japanese master takes his time with Takuji Matsuoka’s (Mutsuo Yoshioka) descent into madness, not immediately allowing the viewer to hear the sound that drives everyone in the film to kill. Kurosawa is always happy to leave a trail of breadcrumbs, but said trail is not about to be laid out in a straight line.
Despite the fact that the film bids the simmering nature of its earliest scenes adieu towards the halfway mark in favor of a violent final hour – one that admittedly feels video game-esque, down to its abandoned factory location – not once does it lose its luster as a clever takedown of life’s greediest souls, those who are willing to go to any lengths as long as they can declare themselves winners in the end. Yoshii’s pursuit of survival, with the help of his trusty sidekick, is as close to a horror movie as Cloud ever gets, as Kurosawa opts for relative silence at every available moment, only for Yasuyuki Sasaki’s camera to linger long enough to show that something sinister is lingering just out of sight. And while every character remains dangerous, the film somehow finds room for humor; its darkest moments are occasionally accompanied by laughs, a difficult balance that only those who have earned it can strike.
Kurosawa’s filmmaking is nothing if not earned, and the result of an audience’s patience with Cloud is yet another thrilling tale of greed, crime, and punishment – or the lack thereof – from one of our greatest living directors. That after all these years, he still refuses to lead us in any direction regarding who we should be rooting for, let alone if we should even be on anyone’s side, makes it all that much more worthwhile when Yoshii asks those who remain by his side, “Am I… so bad?” It’s a line that represents not just the final theoretical nail in an irredeemable dude’s coffin, but how curious and apparent Kurosawa finds one’s obliviousness to their own misdeeds in our current society. Entertaining and scathing in equal measure, Cloud has its finger directly on the pulse of the world’s vile tendency to desire personal gain over all else. Its ability to make the viewer’s heart race is just an added bonus.
Cloud held its North American Premiere as part of the Centerpiece section at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.
Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Writer: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Rated: NR
Runtime: 123m
Cloud has its finger directly on the pulse of the world’s vile tendency to desire personal gain over all else. Its ability to make the viewer’s heart race is just an added bonus.
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GVN Rating
Will Bjarnar is a writer, critic, and video editor based in New York City. Originally from Upstate New York, and thus a member of the Greater Western New York Film Critics Association and a long-suffering Buffalo Bills fan, Will first became interested in movies when he discovered IMDb at a young age; with its help, he became a voracious list maker, poster lover, and trailer consumer. He has since turned that passion into a professional pursuit, writing for the film and entertainment sites Next Best Picture, InSession Film, Big Picture Big Sound, Film Inquiry, and, of course, Geek Vibes Nation. He spends the later months of each year editing an annual video countdown of the year’s 25 best films. You can find more of his musings on Letterboxd (willbjarnar) and on X (@bywillbjarnar).
