No ‘Show’
When your film makes ‘NOw You See Me’ look like carefully considered art…
Black Showman
Director: Akira Tanaka • Writer: Natsu Hashimoto, based on the book by Keigo Higashino
Starring: Masaharu Fukuyama, Kasumi Arimura, Ryo Narita, Toru Nakamura
Japan • 2hrs 7mins
Opens Hong Kong October 23 • IIA
Grade: C-
Question: When you experience marital tension or find yourself overwhelmed by financial struggles, do you take your troubles to your favourite middle school teacher? Not even high school. Middle school. Is that a thing? Who the fuck does that? Evidently this bunch of losers in an itty bitty Japanese town do, because not only are these fools in town for their school reunion (really?) they’re there just in time for the teacher’s funeral. Oh, as well as a memorial of sorts for a school chum that died years before thanks to – say it with me – a terminal illness. This fuckin’ movie.
Black Showman | ブラック・ショーマン is based on prolific mystery writer Keigo Higashino’s (the Detective Galileo series, the Detective Kaga series, The Miracles of the Namiya General Store among scads of others) 2020 novel Black Showman and the Murder in an Obscure Town, and kicks off with what I assume is the “captivating” central character, Takeshi Kamio (Masaharu Fukuyama, who starred in Silent Parade, another Higashino adaptation), wowing audiences in Las Vegas (it’s a Tokyo soundstage) with his nickel-and-dime magic show. There are samurai, and he appears to be a big hit. Not that it really matters, because if you thought the parlour trick nonsense in Now You See Me was boneheaded, then you best strap into one of those neck things you get on a plane. The eye-rolling will pull your whole head back. Director Akira Tanaka, best known for the Confidence Man JP TV series (that’s important), brings his signature flat, cookie-cutter, forced dramatics to Black Showman, failing at every turn to be 1) exciting, 2) mysterious or 3) clever. Black Showman is frustrating for just how bland it is, and for how its crushing mediocrity makes it difficult to whine about. There’s not enough there there.
Their expressions say it all
If Black Showman is trying to pass some kind of comment on a nation’s struggle to find its place in the post-pandemic world and social stagnation it’s way off the damn mark. The unnamed town the action unfolds in is trapped in an economic and cultural rut, its only real currency is being the home of hugely popular manga artist and writer Kastsuki Kugimiya (Ryo Narita). The idea was to build a hotel (?) or theme park based on his bestselling adventure, but the project stalled out during COVID and now the town is watching every corner of Japan welcome record numbers of tourists – except them. So when Takeshi’s beloved teacher brother Eiichi (Toru Nakamura) turns up dead, he heads home to solve the murder. Because I guess the cops are busy with something other than figuring out crime. Helping him is Eiichi’s appropriately named (think condiments) daughter Mayo (Kasumi Arimura), who dumps her wedding dress fitting and heads for home.
What’s supposed to follow, probably, is an amusing romp with a classic scamp-straight man dynamic powering the narrative. Takeshi’s constant magical manipulation and razor sharp intuition about people is the kind of schtick that sets him up to be an irresistable rogue; poor Mayo is meant to be the flustered, earnest partner that keeps Takeshi in line but secretly finds his antics charming. They’re not. They’re irritating and contrived, and do little to peel back the layers of the rinkydink mystery. There’s nothing Poirot-ish about the big reveal – and free pizza for anyone who can tell me how the hell he got that classroom (because of course it’s a classroom) set up so fast.
At its core Black Showman is a whodunit, and so it has a requisite cast of suspects whose motives we’re supposed to care (and guess) about. Among the teacher worshippers are hotelier Momoko (Erika Ikuta), who just wishes Japan’s tourism boom would reach her (I can’t stress how often this movie talks tourism trade); failing bar owner Haraguchi (Yuki Morinaga), who’d love to do a cross-promotion with the Kugimiya’s manga; advertising bigshot Kokonoe (Sae Okazaki), who manages Kugimiya; local bizniz dude Kashiwagi (Subaru Kimura) and his shady banker Makihara (Hiroki Akiyama). Takeshi discovers all sorts of misdeeds during his TV-paced and composed investigation – affairs, money laundering, fraud, attempted arson, etc and so on – and never stops with the card tricks, coin flips, random snapping and, hilariously, 100% abuse of privacy laws and evidence manipulation, none of which mean a damn thing in the end. Why am I watching this?
This is a pretty starry cast of supporting players who you hope are able to something, anything, with the convoluted story but alas, jack shit appears to be on the cards. Fukuyama’s done better work and Arimura is as personality-free as ever, but any underlying currents about family bonds – Mayo and Eiichi were somewhat estranged, or at the very least awkward, and lacked the equilibrium the brothers came to late in life (I think) – and Eiichi’s saintly nature, and willingness to forgive anyone their trespasses. We should believe that’s why he was still besties (again, I just don’t get this) with all his old students but it’s a push, and above all those nuggets are buried under a pile of contrived pigeon poop so deep Black Showman simply comes across as … checks notes … oh yeah. Stupid. Read the book.