Director Mitani Koki has triumphed yet again with another exceptional farce in the style of his previous hits Suite Dreams and Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald. The Magic Hour is hilarious from start to finish, featuring a host of fantastic performances from a cast that includes regular collaborators such as Koichi Sato, as well as talented youngsters like Satoshi Tsumabuki (Waterboys) and Ayase Haruka (Cyborg She).
A young hustler, Bingo (Tsumabuki), is caught canoodling with local gang boss Tessio’s young squeeze, Mari (Eri Fukatsu). In order to save both of them from a watery grave, Bingo agrees to bring in a mysterious assassin, who Tessio (Nishida Toshiyuki) wants whacked. However, it quickly transpires that nobody, including Bingo and Tessio, seems to know the hitman’s true identity. All seems lost until Bingo hatches on a plan to hire struggling screen actor Murata (Sato) to impersonate the killer, by convincing him that he is really taking part in a low budget gangster movie. Murata swans into town, determined to give the performance of his life, and in doing so, winds up being recruited by Tessio’s gang – with increasingly ridiculous consequences.
Mitani’s theatrical routes are clearly on display throughout The Magic Hour. The fictional port town of Sukago (Chicago – get it?) is trapped in some kind of bizarre time warp, where its inhabitants dress and act like their in the 1930s, and the narrow cobbled streets appear deliberately stagy. A character even declares early on that she feels like she’s “trapped on a movie set” and Mitani does little to add realism to the scenario. Instead he plays up every mobster cliché he can think of, and there are numerous nods to famous American gangster movies such as The Untouchables and Miller’s Crossing. Mitani also sets his sights on the film industry – particularly the pretentious nature of “movie stars” – and in doing so The Magic Hour covers similar ground to another film currently screening, Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder.
Both films place actors in potentially dangerous “real life” circumstances, under the misapprehension that they are protected by the magic of Cinema. The leading men, armed only with prop weapons, swagger with confidence before their enemies, completely oblivious to the fact they are actually in considerable danger. However, in Tropic Thunder, its pampered heroes ultimately run screaming from reality back to their sheltered lives in Hollywood, embracing the very things they were poking fun at. The Magic Hour opts for a different conclusion which maintains the integrity of what has come before, keeping the story tight and consistently funny throughout. One standout scene, involving a letter opener, will have the audience in tears of laughter.
The performances from the ensemble cast are beautifully nuanced. Koichi Sato is fantastic as Murata, the outsider thrown into a bizarre time-trap that he believes to be populated by dedicated method actors. Tsumabuki Satoshi makes a likeable romantic lead as the weasely trickster behind this whole charade and Nishida Toshiyuki is quietly brilliant as the bemused mob boss, whose rule is being threatened. It almost seems unfair, however, to single out individuals as everyone – from Murata’s agent (and number one fan), to Tessio’s entourage of mobsters, to the unwelcoming hotelier – helps The Magic Hour to be an almost flawless piece of comic Cinema.
James Marsh |
