As long as everyone is talking about Christopher Nolan, let’s look back at Memento, still my favorite movie by him because it’s such pure cinema, and not just in terms of what you see on the screen. The story is utterly cinematic as it deals with linearity in a way that wouldn’t make sense in any other medium, including the written word. After all, it’s about a guy who can’t remember more than a few minutes into the past and thus has to record and edit experience and save it for later reference. What makes Memento unique is that this looping of time moves backward. Shinji Araki’s similarly schematic Penalty Loop is more conventional, in that the repetitive time loops have a forward momentum, as they do in Groundhog Day. Araki’s protagonist, Jun (Ryuya Wakaba), keeps reliving the same day but changes up the key experience of that day with each successive repeat. If it’s closer in feeling to Nolan’s movie that’s because it’s about revenge, though with Penalty Loop the viewer has to decide in the end if the event that prompted the retribution actually happened.

Also like Groundhog the tone is essentially irreverent. Jun wakes up one day and goes to work where he kills a colleague named Mizoguchi (Yusuke Iseya), who he believes drowned his girlfriend. After disposing of the body and thinking he’s gotten away with the crime he returns home, only to wake up and discover it’s the same day and Mizoguchi is still alive—so he does it again. This scenario replays every time he wakes up, with Jun changing the m.o. in order to achieve closure, but the same day dawns and he has to take an entirely new tack. Eventually, like Bill Murray in Groundhog, he gets to the point where he realizes nothing he does will change matters and becomes almost casual in his approach to homicide. Moreover, his victim comes to expect the violence and even encourages it, adding a layer of comic absurdity that Araki doesn’t always know how to handle. 

Loop movies have a built-in hazard, which is that repetition can quickly become…well, repetitious. Araki keeps the action fresh, but the other shoe has to drop at some point, and while the rationale behind Jun’s seeming predicament is clever, Araki seems reluctant to spell it out in terms that would trace a clear through-line from Jun’s girlfriend’s death to Jun’s murderous intent, a process that, along the way, has been affected by technology and commercial protocols. Though not particularly deep, Penalty Loop is one of those movies that encourages post-viewing discussions to help the viewer reach some understanding of what it’s supposed to mean (spoiler: the flyer provides a strong clue), so I would suggest that you see it with someone who likes to talk about movies.

In Japanese. Now playing in Tokyo at Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670), Ikebukuro Cinema Rosa (03-3986-3713).

Penalty Loop home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Penalty Loop Film Partners