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An actor who unwittingly plays a hitman? This is a hilarious and wacky premise, and done any other way, would have been extremely broad, but Mitani does a wonderful job at restraint, keeping the humor quirky and sustainable. I loved this movie. It's hard to pull off because after the lie is revealed in the third act, I was expecting the movie to lose its steam, but it doesn't! The filmmaking is also beautiful yet not showy.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
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Audience Member
Quite funny in a way for those in-jokes within the film industry. But once again, its overlong length was one big drawback, to me, at least.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/04/23
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Audience Member
"The Magic Hour" knows very well how to pull off the classic comedic misunderstanding. Its plot is the kind of thing where the audience knows full well what's going on, but when the characters interact they each interpret conversations and events wrongly. The situation escalates, with one character always thinking they're talking about A and the other always thinking they're talking about B, and the longer it goes on the more ridiculous and the more hilarious it gets. Ridiculous, of course, because if either character would at any time just spell out what they're talking about, it would all be cleared up and the movie would be over. That can't happen until the end, when things have gotten as crazy as the screenwriter can make them. It's a formula that's been used in sitcom episodes and movies for a long time, and "The Magic Hour" is a movie that knows and respects entertainment history. It is funny and emotional in all the right places. If it is predictable, the advantage of that is that audiences know what to do with it.
Surely one of the first things you have to do to enjoy a movie like this is to toss any expectations of realism out the window. The best scene in "The Magic Hour" involves an elaborate showdown with a Thai street gang featuring an arms sale, a hidden assassin, and a suitcase full of fake money. It all goes wrong in a way that would surely lead to the characters figuring out that nothing is what they think it is, but of course we cut to the next scene without anyone having faced the seemingly inevitable moment of realization. That's fine, the rules are different in a comedy like this.
That's why it's a bit of a problem that "The Magic Hour" seems to compulsively poke at its own plot holes. When the movie starts, it initially appears to be set during the 1920s, to judge from the cars, clothes, hairstyles, buildings, and general atmosphere. But this is misdirection, and within minutes the movie seems to have decided that is set more or less in the present. The town just so happens to look like an old movie set, and its residents just happen to dress the part-an odd quirk, but it helps set a certain tone. The problem is, the movie doesn't leave it at that. Chronology keeps playing a niggling role. The movie borrows the styles and tropes of noir to characterize its heavy and its femme fatale, but it repeatedly steps back to examine that era of entertainment as a thing of the past. One of the characters is obsessed with a "Casablanca"-like film whose Bogart figure is seen years later as a very old man. At the same time, a struggling actor seems to act in nothing but black and white gangster movies. It's not confusing, but it's hard not to be distracted by the fact that half of the characters seem to be living in a different time period than the other half.
There are some additional logical inconsistencies, most of which revolve around the out-of-time, out-of-place femme fatale (Eri Fukatsu), that I felt I was expected to ignore and was happily doing so until the movie itself to bring them up without providing any real explanations. Why doesn't she just skip town? I wondered at the beginning. Why don't we just skip town? she asks much, much later. The run-time is so long that I'd forgotten my quibble until it was brought to the fore in a late attempt to manufacture an arc for the underdeveloped female lead.
The actors, especially Toshiyuki Nishida as a mob boss and Koichi Sato as the struggling actor, manage to pull off the film's various conceits better than the script does, and are often hilarious in their exaggerated roles. The object of a comedy of misunderstandings, after all, is to enjoy a series of funny misunderstandings, and "The Magic Hour" provides plenty of them.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/25/23
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Audience Member
What is the magic hour? It is the time of day when the sunsets, but the sky is bright with contrast of orange and blue. Perfect time of day to film a movie! Very original!!! Mafia and movie making, what more can you ask for?
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
01/16/23
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Audience Member
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Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/21/23
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Audience Member
Hilarious! I love Mitani's movies. I couldn't stop laughing.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
01/18/23
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