Cloud (2024) – Review

Quick Thoughts:

1. Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa has crafted an “action thriller” that is loaded with surprises, tension and dread.
2. Internet reselling seems horrible.
3. Hire reliable assistants.
4. Masaki Suda is excellent, and he plays his puzzle-box character to perfection. He’s impulsive, instinctual, unassertive, resourceful, and completely unknowable.
5. Since it’s a Kurosawa film, expect a heavy dose of loneliness, isolation and technological woes. 
6. It made me very happy.

The best thing that can be said about Cloud is that it’s on its own wavelength. Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Pulse, Cure, Tokyo Sonata, Chime, Serpent’s Path – he has an amazing filmography) has always wanted to make an action film, but he wasn’t interested in flashy combat or expert sharpshooters, so he’s placed a bunch of “ordinary” people into a deadly situation and let them loose. The action in Cloud is ugly, fast and almost comical, which is exactly what Kurosawa wanted. The point isn’t to showcase sexy revenge plots; instead, the violence leads characters down open-ended paths that are far from optimistic. 

The film revolves around a character named Yoshi (Masaki Suda) who works at a clothing factory during the day and resells goods at night. He’s not the type of guy who waits hours outside a store to snag an exclusive item; instead, he instinctively pounces on good deals and occasionally lets his impulses guide him towards purchasing pallets of  “designer” purses and hand-crafted figurines. He rarely discusses his methods, but the opening scene where he buys surplus “therapy machines” from a desperate couple which he then flips for a large profit – shows he isn’t afraid to financially cheat people. 

There are seemingly only three people in Yoshi’s life, and they are his girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa), a fellow online seller Muraoka (Masataka Kubota), and his factory boss Takimoto (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa). Akiko won’t move in with him because his apartment is too small, Muraoka is mad at him because he won’t invest in a startup, and Takimoto is flummoxed by the disciplined man who refuses promotion offers. The captivating thing about the lone wolf Yoshi is that he’s direct in a cold manner that adds a layer of ambiguity to the seemingly ordinary guy. In an interview with Cinema Daily US, Kurosawa mentions that since Yoshi is Japanese, “his feelings of joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure are not so clear.” The lack of clarity becomes a problem as his nonchalant demeanor rubs people the wrong way which leads to steel cables being placed across his bike path and dark figures lingering behind him on buses.

After a big sale, he dispassionately quits his factory job (while turning down a promotion) and moves to a suburb that provides extra space for him to work. His reselling business becomes successful enough that he hires an assistant (Daiken Okudaira), and loads his spacious house with a swanky espresso machine (that rarely works) and dozens of boxes. Yoshi’s isolated tranquility doesn’t last long as a car part is thrown through a bedroom window, and the investigating cops don’t seem happy with his reselling business. 

What follows is an examination of mob mentality, ugly violence and capitalism gone awry. An interesting tidbit is that Kurosawa is friends with an online reseller, and their relationship adds a level of realism to what Yoshi is doing. Also, by wanting to feature “muddled, unrefined, and realistic violence,” Kurosawa makes the violence hard to stomach as there’s no heroics or guns-ablazing theatrics. Yoshi as a character is intriguing because what he does is morally dubious as he resells knockoff goods at huge prices while hiding behind the online alias “Ratel.” However, he can compartmentalize his bad deeds, and since he’s one of many online resellers (who do the same thing), is he that bad? The guy is a mystery and a bit of a blank slate, so it’s up to the audience to decide what/who he is. 

Cloud offers a unique journey and if you want to watch a master filmmaker direct his first “action” film, I totally recommend that you check it out.