Thirty Lies or So (2004)

Average but charming enough

The first thing to know is that the details of the scam our scammers are running are not important. The real subject of the movie is not the scam but the relationships between the characters and most of the movie is spent in the train, watching them talk to each other as they work through their personnal and relationship issues.

We very quickly learn their last job did not go well and it's very obvious it left them some scars. Tensions, regrets, reproaches, mistrust, and bitterness are all running high in that train. Yet, even though the job they do has its price, it seems they cannot do anything else, and are better at it together. Better at life, together, really, and that journey is their last effort and last chance to fix themselves.

As such I felt it was a shame that while we do feel time pass, we don't really feel the finish line coming closer, and that there's less and less time to fix what has to be fixed. I felt this would have given the movie more emotionnal weight, which it was lacking.

I liked the characters. There's a "found family" vibe to them, and I'm weak to that sort of stuff. They are, as one of them describes them, a bunch of weirdos that only fit in with each other, in the world they make up when they run scams. The issue, though, is that while we're told they don't fit in society and with other people, we're never shown that. The characters are nicely portrayed and we get a good sense of who they are, yet since we never seen them in the world at large, their alienation is hardly felt. And again I felt the movie lacked emotional weight.

The one exception is Tsumabuki Satoshi's character. The movie seems to look at him especially closely (he's the first thing we really see, in a very close shot) and we are shown several break downs where the emotional stakes for him are made clear. Hence, he's the one that brought some "feels" for me.

Another issue I had with the movie is that it's a lot of "telling, not showing", which is fine, but I felt the telling just wasn't exceptional, by which I mean the dialogues didn't feel especially witty or moving to me. They do nothing wrong, they just also don't do anything great. That being said, this should be taken with a huge grain of salt since I do not speak japanese and rely on subtitles that might not do the dialogues justice.

Anyway, this does sum up nicely my thoughts on the movie: it doesn't really do anything wrong, it just doesn't do anything great either. It's okay, I had a good time with it, I just probably won't remember it next year.

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