A greedy reseller will get a visit from karma, which will change him forever.
Cloud is directed by the man of mystery, Kiyoshi Kurosawa. In this movie, we follow a reseller who is greedy, and he’s not a character you’ll like. He moves to a new place with his girlfriend after someone starts harassing him, and he hires an assistant. But he won’t get peace for long before someone starts harassing him again—and they are not friendly. So, are they dissatisfied customers?
You can divide this movie into two halves. The first half is the best, where the movie feels more like a psychological thriller that’s hard to predict. But then the quality takes a deep dive in the second half when the movie turns into an action flick with a long shootout that won’t impress you—at least not if you’re a fan of the Hong Kong master Johnny To. And I’m a big fan of the Toe-man. You know I love sexy women’s toes, right? Sorry, Johnny!
The protagonist is a character you’ll hate because he’s selfish and greedy, and he deserves what’s coming to him. But the movie never really follows up on the pain and darkness that should await him. He’s a bad seed, and you have to kill bad seeds—especially bad seeds that ruin other people’s lives.
Since this is a Kiyoshi Kurosawa movie, you expect some dark humor, and you get that kind of dark humor when it turns out that everyone hates the protagonist—except for one character. He doesn’t care if he sells fake merchandise, and he doesn’t want to know if he does. So you hope that this bastard of a man will burn in hell for eternity.
As you can probably tell, this is not a movie with a protagonist you care about. But it builds up an interesting universe in the first half with the protagonist and some of his closest friends, and I didn’t expect the movie to turn into a predictable action movie in the last 20 minutes. Why, Kiyoshi? Why? You are not the Toe-man—I am!
And to be honest, I didn’t quite understand what the deal was with the one character who cares about the protagonist and the people he used to work for. Is he the devil who’s out to ruin the protagonist’s life because of his greed? Does he enjoy watching the protagonist ruin his own life—and other people’s lives?
This is not a movie with great or deep character development, since it doesn’t explain much—except that the protagonist is a greedy, selfish man who will get a visit from karma. But the characters who represent karma have no character depth, so they’re not interesting. They have no soul, except that they hate the protagonist—as you will too.