Yuka (Hiromi Nagasaku) is an attractive young woman whose brother has recently died under mysterious circumstances. Shortly before his untimely death, Yuka got her first glimpse of his double, who has since moved into their apartment and taken his place. Hayasaki (Koji Yakusho) is a brilliant but mercurial scientist obsessed with perfecting a robot chair for the disabled, with wheels and mechanical arms that are supposed to function according to the "will" of the user. In his single-mindedness,
he harangues his underlings and aggravates his employer, who is focused on the bottom line. After a co-worker tells Hayasaki about Yuka's experience, he finds himself being stalked by a doppelganger. At first, he thinks he is doomed, like Yuka's brother, and tries to avoid his double. Eventually, he loses his job, and control of his invention, and the doppelganger steps in to take care of everything. The double trashes Hayasaki's former lab, stealing the robot chair so the scientist can continue his work. The double also hires a young thug, Kimishima (Yusuke Santamaria), to work for them. The double says Kimishima is "just dumb enough not to find us alarming." But Hayasaki's fears come to the fore when the double takes advantage of Yuka's interest in him. And when his former employer, Aoki (Masahiro Toda), now disgraced, comes looking for a piece of the robot-chair action, the scientist finds himself uncertain who to trust. Doppelganger, a dark comedy directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure) from a script by Kurosawa and Ken Furusawa, was shown at the 2004 Rotterdam Film Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi
an interesting, if somewhat formulaic horror tale [that] evolves into a merciless satire about the struggle to live an authentic life in a plastic world
tweaks the genre and the audience's expectations, subtly changing from a quietly effective horror film into a slick satire on modern life. And that is no less scary
This film seems to have people who really like it or really don't. I suppose I fall somewhere in between. After enjoying Cure so much, I was expecting as good of or better film but overall, wasn't too bad.Technically, this was a nicely shot movie and there were some interesting ideas at work. A lot of care was taken
in framing and blocking. The editing was also quite impressive with a number of instances where the screen was split into two or three segments showing the different sides of Hayasaki and his ghostly twin. The acting was good from all involved and everyone was trying their best with what they were given. In the end, I felt Doppelganger fell victim to lazy writing.
March 30, 2008
El Hombre Invisible
Super Reviewer
I saw this a while ago but it seems that Flixster has added it only now. Not that I really care, because this is Kiyoshi Kurosawa's worst movie by a mile. I honestly cannot remember a single thing about the plot except that it lacked any sort of conflict or character development. The one scene I can recall is when Koji
Yakusho freaked out and destroyed a bunch of equipment because goddamn, at least he was DOING something. This is the movie that made me wonder if KK is pulling the wool over my eyes with the rest of his films. That's kind of a harsh assessment for a director that I really adore, but seriously, the man gets his screenplays right one out of five times. It's kind of admirable that he just says "fuck it" to those cinematic conventions, but a lot of the time they exist for a reason. Someone send this man a decent script!
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