Critic Reviews

By the film’s haunting finale – a gut-punch moment of reckoning that follows nearly half an hour of entertainingly amateurish gunplay – Kurosawa’s sentiments on the current state of e-commerce are clear. Whether emptor or venditor, capitalism is full of caveats.

Even amid the loud, incessant pop of gunfire, Kurosawa avoids monotony; he has a knack for embedding ideas within action, and for developing action in ways that trigger yet more ideas.

While Pulse was a warning, Cloud seems more like a funeral bell, a despairing look at life on the online economic periphery.

This is more “Reservoir Dogs” than “Ringu.” But whatever box one wants to place it in, it’s a reminder of Kurosawa’s remarkable skill with pacing and plotting, delivering a brisk film that leaves one pondering its themes, especially what it means to live in an era when nothing is real.

A sneaky tale of savagery in the dehumanizing digital age, writer-director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Cloud” is as bleak a warning as you’ll find in theaters this year, cautioning against the corrosive combination of late capitalism, the internet and human nature.

Cloud is a portrait of merciless 21st-century commerce and social cruelty that’s filtered through various genre lenses.

This riveting and highly unusual shoot-em-up finds Kurosawa returning to his roots, only to discover that psychological terror isn’t quite as abstract as it used to be.

A cold thriller with a dark, satirical edge that shows the master filmmaker at his leanest and meanest.

The action isn't elegant. It's erratic and loud and ugly. . . it's a symphony of chaos. It's also a damn good time, even if Kurosawa leaves us with the haunting notion that we're all too connected, just one click away from finding opportunity or something much more dangerous.

If you’ve ever wished ill towards a scalper, Kurosawa has the film for you. But this darkly comic thriller also skewers those who flirt with fantasies of vengeance from behind supposed anonymity.