Cloud is another successful and intelligently made genre thriller from veteran Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who well into his career still finds new ways of reinventing himself. Part slow burning techno thriller and part action extravaganza, Kurosawa’s riff on the traditional Nikkatsu styled noir (distributed domestically by the same purveyor of those B-movie classics) sets a proper stage before exploding to life. Cloud is a film that winds itself up so much that when the snap finally arrives, the final results are more satisfying as a result. Throw in the fact that Kurosawa also offers up intelligent commentary on the current state of retail finance, and Cloud emerges as one of the prolific and varied director’s most uniquely entertaining efforts.
Ryosuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda) doesn’t care very much about his day job at a commercial laundry. His boss (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa) would love to promote Ryosuke to a management position, but the young man refuses, admitting that he doesn’t put enough effort into the job to begin with. To take such a promotion would cut into his more lucrative side hustle as an online reseller, who buys up overstock items for a song (or skews markets to create less supply for a great demand) and makes hefty profits. Things have gotten so busy and lucrative that’s he’s able to hire a loyal, eager assistant (Daiken Okudaria). A vocational school teacher and former classmate (Mastataka Kubota) approaches Ryosuke with an opportunity to take his enterprise to the next level, but the young man prefers going about things in his own way. Just as things start to look better for Ryosuke and his long term, but under-appreciated girlfriend (Kotone Furukawa), he starts receiving increasingly violent threats, both online and off. His paranoia necessitates a move from the city to the suburbs, but that doesn’t help matters. To make things worse, he doesn’t fully understand or comprehend what he should be paranoid about.
In classic noir fashion, Cloud opens up with a series of sequences showing that Ryosuke isn’t a great human being and that all of his torment to follow could simply be a case of reaping what he’s sown. Kurosawa (Pulse, Wife of a Spy, Tokyo Sonata, Cure) starts things off quietly, often setting scenes in simplistic rooms and spaces where people converse one on one in measured tones, even about things that are deeply bothering them. There’s a cold calculation to Cloud in the early going befitting of a character who makes a living by keeping distance between himself and his customers. Ryosuke has made money by being impersonal, caring more about numbers and the bottom line than personal details and ethics. At one well written and emotionally telling point, Ryosuke’s assistant asks if a bunch of designer handbags that are going up for sale are authentic or counterfeit, and his boss says that he doesn’t know and doesn’t care. He prefers anonymity and vagueness, and so too do many of his customers.
That is, until those anonymous threats and scary situations start to increase and become less anonymous and more specific. Ryosuke’s lifestyle change also adds to his stresses as he was able to maintain a low profile in the city; not so much in the suburbs, where the locals tend to frown upon shady outsiders. Through the slow build, Kurosawa is able to examine the modern day economy and particularly how many young people have been forced to engage with it. Cloud is a story about a hustler. He doesn’t trade in sex or illegal substances, but when things go wrong, the aggrieved customer or a betrayed partner could have a similarly violent reaction. In an age where so many reselling websites advertise themselves as being “the perfect side hustle,” Cloud uses those promises of fast and easy cash for cautionary purposes. Not every deal is one worth taking.
Kurosawa – a filmmaker adept at milking shadows and misdirection for all their worth – keeps Cloud on an upward trajectory throughout. Creepy people lurk menacingly, power outages come at suspicious times, things get thrown through windows, and there’s a particular love for booby traps throughout, something that extends nicely into Kurosawa’s more conventionally entertaining climax. Cloud weaves a hypnotic hold over the viewer, making them invest in the situation and the eventual action packed payoff, even if they have their doubts about the characters and their intentions. That doubt is the point, especially when dealing with people who live (and die) by the internet.
Cloud opens in select Canadian theatres on Friday, July 18, 2025, including TIFF Lightbox in Toronto, Metro Cinema in Edmonton, The Cinematheque in Vancouver, and Dave Barber Cinematheque in Winnipeg.
