A mystery outside of San Francisco brings together small-town sheriff Paul Del Moral, Japanese author Aki Akahori, and a traveler from Reno who soon disappears, leaving behind his suitcase and a trail of questions.
20 Sep Man from Reno (2014)
Shell Game
Alas, I continue to find comments original posted to IMDB, deleted because of a complaint by an unseen adversary — and therefore lost. However, a re-viewing brings this later comment.
Spoilers here. This is much like ‘Chinatown’ with some ‘Vertigo’ mixed in. Both noirs of the old fashioned kind. We have a hapless soul whose life is subject to an improbable story designed to amuse us. Here it is a writer, who writes presumably what we see until the twists at the end. We also have an onscreen detective, who as usual is only a half step ahead of us and as confused.
As with ‘Chinatown’, a rich old dude. As with ‘Vertigo’, identity theft. The acting and pacing is from 50 years ago.
On seeing this a second time, the craft in the writing is superb. The first time around, I was put off by how quickly at the end big things happened. But I see now at least the intent that the pace of disclosure had a constant acceleration which I believe we subconsciously recognise. We expect something extraordinary to happen at an increasing schedule, so though this has no tension-producing elements, the tension grows anyway.
The shocker is that our noir hero dies. This never happens in the pure form. She leaves a written narration. That’s unusual, as it is usually spoken. Here, it is in Japanese to boot.
Posted in 2024
Ted’s Evaluation — 3 of 3: Worth watching.
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