CLOUD - Mark Reviews Movies

Cloud, Sideshow / Janus Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 17, 2025

Ryosuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda), the protagonist of Cloud, wants what a good number of people want: some sense of independence and feeling of freedom while making enough money to live a comfortable life. This might not seem like much, except that it is, as anyone who has tried it could attest.

This man's efforts make up the first half of the story of writer/director Kiyoshi Kurosawa's film, which follows Ryosuke's attempt to continue and expand a very modern kind of business. He's an amateur reseller online, looking for products that can be bought for cheap or that might become valuable in the near future, who wants to become professional—to make it his career and sole source of income. The man's life, then, is essentially a long hustle—looking for bargains or in-demand items that might become scarce, keeping an eye on the listings of his internet marketplace to make sure his price matches demand and makes him a profit, packing up and mailing purchases before starting the whole process over again.

The first half or so of Kurosawa's film, then, is a fascinating study of procedure, while also allowing the nature of Ryosuke's business to show us the kind of person he is. Take his introduction in the opening scene, which watches as he negotiates the cheapest price possible for a haul of "therapy devices." What these machines are for or do in practice is irrelevant, because the point is that Ryosuke sees a manufacturer who's desperate to make some money on a product that isn't selling and the chance to make a very good profit, if our man plays his cards correctly.

He buys more than two dozen device at less than a quarter of the market value each and, upon putting the machines for sale online, sells each one for double the price that he spent on the lot. That's very, very good math for Ryosuke, who watches as every unit is purchased.

Part of the trick of Kurosawa's storytelling is how simple and appealing he makes Ryosuke's trade. There's nothing special about this guy, except his way of haggling and convincing people that his offers are the best ones anyone could receive.

For example, he later manages to clear out the entire inventory of a rare collection of custom statues of an animated character—before the shop preparing to sell them even opens its doors to an awaiting crowd. He does so by complimenting the store's owner on his taste, telling him that he appreciates the craft of the statues more than some collector who'll keep it in a closet, and offering the shopkeeper more than the asking price. What the owner doesn't know, of course, is that Ryosuke plans to keep those statues on shelves in his home until he sell the now-rare collectibles at an even higher price than he paid for them.

All of this looks easy, in other words, as long as one is the kind of person Ryosuke shows himself to be: dishonest, opportunistic, and without any consideration for anything or anyone than how much money he can make on a deal. Another part of the film's trick, then, is how Kurosawa doesn't present his protagonist as particularly admirable or even worth much judgment. His existence is a mere fact of an economic system that rewards and, hence, encourages this kind of behavior, without considering the other sides of the transaction, except the person making the profit.

The film is, in its initially observant and procedural way, insightful and incisive about Ryosuke. He makes his deals and sales, makes more money, quits his job at a garment factory to focus reselling, rents a bigger house outside of Tokyo after living in a cramped apartment for years, convinces his girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa) to move in with him, and seems unstoppable. Sure, he leaves behind a couple people—namely his former boss Takimoto (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa), whom he awkwardly ignores when his old employer comes calling for a visit, and his mentor in resales Muraoka (Masataka Kubota), whose request for some startup funding for an auction app Ryosuke quietly rejects—and hires a local young man named Sano (Daiken Okudaira), instead of anyone he knows, as an assistant. Such is business, though.

It's almost as if he's hiding, especially since all of his online transactions are handled under an anonymous username. There are hints and, later, confirmations that Ryosuke has a good reason—many of them, in fact—to hide, because not everyone is happy with his means and methods of financial success.

The final trick Kurosawa plays here is how all of these elements—from the character study at the film's center, to the details of how Ryosuke conducts business, to the mounting tension that some unknown and unseen person or persons might have ill intentions in mind for the guy—ultimately transform into a ruthlessly satirical allegory. There are consequences for Ryosuke's attitude and behavior, which he tries to ignore or forget, but they all come calling.

In practice, the standoff is a literal one. That might have been disappointing after Kurosawa's detail-oriented storytelling beforehand, except that the execution of the extended cat-and-mouse game and showdown that make up the third act is almost as thoroughly presented as the buildup to it. Yes, Cloud ends with a lengthy sequence of chases and shootouts, but they mean something here—as the absurd but logical end to both the plot and film's thematic concerns about a system that only sees success and life as a collection of winners and losers.

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