This movie is a suspense movie. The main character is Aoyagi. One day, he is mistaken for a murderer so that he runs for dear life. However, when he runs, there are a lot of difficulties. In order to live, he runs away many chaser with the help of his friends. I think that his performance is really good. In particular, I strongly feel sense of urgency. If you are interested in his performance, please watch this movie.

The beginning had a strong opening where I was actually engaged/intrigued, but after the main character makes a "run for it", that is when everything just falls apart, literally (story/pacing), and just becomes a plain, super dragged out, extremely silly and dumb, where things just conveniently happen just for the sake of happening (old man in the hospital... come on now), boring adventure. I can suspend some disbelief, but they end up taking things way too far. It's like the opening starts out really accelerating with a big bang that grabs your interest -- and you'd think it would be more intense after he makes a run for it, but instead the whole film after that just never picks up the pace/just slows way way down/drags and decides to take a huge cartoon world/scenario approach instead. It's very obvious things just unnaturally, forcefully occur just for the sake of the director/writer to connect it with another ridiculous silly plot (Oh, those memories of making out in an abandoned crummy old Corolla... oh! let's bring back that nostalgia and have a wife, who knows absolutely nothing about cars, hook up the battery herself to come to the rescue... Just silly.)The writer of this film clearly is a Beatles fan and believes in the JFK assassination conspiracy/media manipulations. The plot is about the Prime Minister of Japan being assassinated instead, and it ends up being framed on the main character, where he then makes a run for it. The film is a satire of "Lee Harvey Oswald" being framed for JFK, or "Bin Laden" for 9/11, where the media just needs an "image"/scapegoat. The idea is very interesting and I was really engaged and excited at first where it was going to end up, but the rest of the film is just absolute torture and disappointing. Although I cry easily when watching movies, I could not even cry once or find anything touching for this film; I can tell the director tried to throw in all these cheesy touchy moments, but it's so forcefully done, it just makes you roll your eyes and cringe instead. (Seriously... fireworks coming out of manhole covers??? Come on now... That had to be the stupidest thing ever. The wife is some sort of superwoman.) The problem with this film is that it doesn't know whether to be completely serious or end up going so over-the-top ridiculousness turning into an anime world. When people start behaving like they do in anime and really over-the-top silly things start to happen, it actually backfires on the realism/suspense - it really takes the audience out of it. It seriously loses its suspense because you just can't take it seriously anymore. It needs consistency, which this film doesn't have. What made movies like "The Fugitive" suspenseful and exciting is because as over-the-top Hollywood action it may have had, it was still grounded. The ending "twist" is also not that clever/not worth all that time for that pay off. I felt like the movie was more like 3 hours long; it just really felt that dragged on.The positive reviews are giving this movie way too much credit than it really is. Overall, the plot had potential, but the film decided to take a cartoon silly approach with an extremely cheesy flashback "going back home" story.

Gotta give this one points for originality. A none-too-bright (at least at the beginning) fellow is set up as the fall guy in a plot to assassinate the Japanese prime minister. He manages to elude capture through chance, and friends who help him, and sheer luck...again, and again, and...againandagainandagain....Normally I don't watch this kind of flic, although I found myself thinking "but I watched Skyfall just last week...." But there is some great humor here, especially if you have some familiarity with Japanese culture (not all of the gags translate well). The "Death to Gropers!!" line in particular is ROFL funny...given all the sunny slogans that typically are written by Japanese kids in calligraphy class.I did find myself cringing the third or fourth time a character sang the Beatles' standard "Golden Slumber", typically out of tune. Have the remote ready, and don't be afraid to hammer that fast-forward button.You might like this if you can ignore the extreme implausibility of eg. your typical James Bond movie, and enjoy intermittent humor, and unexpected twists.

Story of a delivery man who is set up by some unknown people to take the blame for the killing of the prime minister of Japan. Things go cockeyed when he manages to get away and is chased across the city and helped by friends, family and a serial killer.Rambling looping story thats spins out its story then begins to cross back on it self is very much in the style of the directors earlier films such as a Fish Story and A Foreign Duck, A Domestic Duck and God in a Coin Locker. Knowing that the film all interconnects and that the time frame is fragmented takes a bit of the wonder out of the film because knowing the style allows you to piece whats happening together.Don't get me wrong I like the film, but the people I spoke with after the screening at the NYAFF who hadn't seen any of the directors earlier films were rapturous because they had never seen anything like it. How well you know what the director does will make the film go from good to great depending.Very much worth a look.