Cloud

2024 / Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa / Japan / 123 minutes

Inspired by the actions of the lead character in Cloud, who makes a living buying products at low prices and flipping them for profit, director Kiyoshi Kurosawa purposefully flips his slow-burn character study directly across its axis. Beginning as an ominous dissection of banal and petty internet crime and culminating in an explosive Tarantinoesque action frenzy, Kurosawa demonstrates an ability to riffle through genres seamlessly, juggling drama, dark humor, home-invasion thrills, and gritty violent spectacle. Cloud is an especially lean cinematic piece, perhaps even too much so, and yet there’s plenty of chaos to decipher as action clashes with consequence. Not every aspect of this downward spiral comes together to form a fully satisfying digestible whole, but Kurosawa imprints enough of his own personality upon the film to leave us with plenty to mull over, primarily relating to the corrupted world he envisions and the varying shades of grey who inhabit it.