Sometimes you don’t know what you’re going to get with foreign films. They can be a mixed bag, but then again, most films can be a mixed bag these days. Cloud is one of those kinds of films. I have heard good things about it, but I still didn’t know what to expect from this Japanese action thriller. What I got was something interesting but not something I’d say blew me away or anything like that. It was a good film dealing with a fascinating world, but it wasn’t like wow, that was a great film or anything. Maybe my expectations were a little too high. I learned my lesson not to get so excited about a new movie that others liked.

Toshii (Masaki Suda) is a young man who seems like he’s doing okay. He has a job and a pretty girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa). He also has a side hustle of buying goods in bulk and reselling them.This is a pretty good deal that he has. He’s doing so well that they end up moving out of his apartment and moving to a house in a secluded area of town where he can have his side business at his home. Once again, he’s doing fine until he starts to get threats, and his home is being vandalized by ingrown assailants.His new assistant who he hired to help him tries to help figure out what’s going on, but it ends up being bigger than either of them expected.

This is a slow burn of a story. The viewers watch, so they get to know about this man and the world he lives in. There are a number of scenes that show him buying and selling goods. And there are a few scenes with him and his girlfriend. All of these moments help to define who this man is. I got to know him, and I genuinely liked what I was seeing. He seemed like a good guy who worked hard and cared about his relationship. That’s why when everything falls apart in the third act, it’s quite surprising to behold. I was really shocked by what I saw in the third act. You never know what you’re going to get in movies sometimes.

The lead actor uses an alias to sell his goods, but because he sells locally, it gets around that he’s undercutting his competitors and gauging his buyers. Word gets around when people feel like they are being mistreated. In the case of this film, a lot of people felt that way. The director Kiyoshi Kurosawa kept things a little mysterious until the third act when things got out of hand. I loved getting to know the lead character and his support system of co-workers, friends, and his girlfriend.  I felt like I knew this man and genuinely cared about him before all the craziness happened.

Speaking of craziness. There is a massive gun fight at the end of the film, but I won’t say anything about the particulars of how the movie got to this portion of the story. The gun fight takes place at a big warehouse building with a lot of rooms, stairwells, and various areas to set up different sequences during the gun fight scenes. How the various scenes unfolded in the big gun shootout were interesting; there were a few shocking moments that transpired. Motivations of some of the people involved in the big end sequence were revealed, and they weren’t good. Jealousies and grievances were brought to the light. I was a little confused by some of this stuff, to be honest. 

Cloud is an apt title for this movie because I was a little cloudy on why people were mad at the protagonist.  He seemed to be a good guy to me. This went from a feel-good story to an action film, though. Which was crazy. The entire cast was all fine, with Suda being the standout as the star of the film. He made me care about his performance, his character. This was a strange world he was wrapped up in, and I didn’t expect it to be so cutthroat. The action gun shootout was the best part of the movie. I was glad to see some of the people who got shot die. They deserved it from my perspective. Overall, this was a good movie, not a great one. I wanted it to be great.

3 stars

Dan Skip Allen