Seventh Code

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Seventh Code (2013) is a slight (one hour) thriller made to showcase former AKB48 singer/actress Akiko Maeda that surprisingly garnered Kurosawa a Best Director Award at the Rome Film Festival in 2013. Prior to this film I have only seen his critically acclaimed 2008 film Tokyo Sonata. However, from what I have read about Kurosawa neither of these films are representative of his usual genre which is horror. That being said, this is a very accomplished thriller. Maeda plays Akiko a seemingly naive woman who travels to Vladivostok, Russia to pursue a man, Matsunaga (Ryohei Suzuki) she supposedly met once before in Tokyo and can't get out of her mind. She is Shanghaied and is dumped in a field with out any possessions or money. After that she finds a kindly Japanese expat who runs a restaurant with his sympathetic Chinese girlfriend put her up and help her locate Matsunaga. Near the end of the film there is a twist that totally changes the tone of the film and it also has an unexpected conclusion. I thought the film was a lot of fun and I liked how Kurosawa used the locations in Vladivostok.