Here to prove once again that movies about internet crime can so easily unravel into implausible silliness is that otherwise estimable Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who has written and directed a bizarre, baffling action thriller based on the (initially interesting) idea of an online retail entrepreneur ripping off his customers and suppliers – who then seek revenge.
Masaki Suda plays Ryôsuke, a guy in the rackety business of buying in bulk and selling the items individually online at a retail markup. Some of the things he buys are fake designer items, which he markets as genuine. But some are perfectly legal: collectible action figures and the like which are advertised entirely honestly. At the beginning we see him ruthlessly buying “therapy devices” from a medical business that has gone bust and then exploitatively putting them up for sale. (But wait. Even if we believe in these therapy devices, why doesn’t the embattled business itself just sell them online? It’s not explained.)
Flush with cash, Ryôsuke moves to a place in the country to pursue his business with more space for his dodgy goods and his girlfriend moves there with him. But then the people he’s defrauded band together in some kind of unlikely enraged gang to get payback, all of them apparently with casual access to weaponry. Ryôsuke’s own assistant turns out to be pretty much gun crazy.
And so all the hi-tech detail and low-key everyday believability of the story is jettisoned in favour of an entirely ridiculous shootout in a deserted factory, with many deafening bullet ricochets off metal fittings. The final half-hour seems to be a neo-western style melee which seems to go on for ever. Odd … and unrewarding.
• Cloud is in UK cinemas from 25 April.
