Japanese Comedy is a special thing. Same goes for The Stand in Thief, A movie released in the end of 2017. What would you do if your thieving past was possibly revealed to your new girlfriend? Would you go to the same lengths as Onuki Hajime? Let’s get into all this thieving and mistaken identities.
Movie: The Stand-In Thief / Thief Actor
Also known as: 泥棒役者 / Dorobou Yakusha
Director: Masafumi Nishida
Writer: Masafumi Nishida
Release Date: November 18, 2017
Runtime: 114 min.
Distributor: Showgate
Language: Japanese
Country: Japan
Cast:
- Maruyama Ryuhei as Onuki Hajime
- Ichimura Masachika as Maezono Shuntaro
- Ishibashi Anna as Oku Eriko
- Daisuke Miyagawa as Norio Hatayama
- Yusuke Santamaria as Ryosuke Todoroki
- Jin Katagiri as Jin Takanashi
- Mitsuki Takahata as Misa Fujioka
Plot
Hajime has a welding job and girlfriend with whom he lives. It was not always this way however, being abandoned as a child he turned to books, one book in particular ‘TAMA TO MIKI‘ after he grew up he fell in with the wrong crowd and became a robber. He was caught breaking and entering and send to juvenile detention but since he got out he turned his life around, got a job as a welder and fell in love with Misa. The past comes to haunt him, however, when a former associate forces to commit a crime again by breaking into a house with a big safe. He is caught red-handed, he thinks, multiple times by multiple people. In the end he is caught in a web where he has to keep up his mistaken identity between 3 different people for different reasons. In the end he protects the people he is hiding from and he makes friends for life.
Conclusion:
8/10
This movie had me laughing through the entire thing. It’s acted over the top and it’s really cute in many ways. I really love these types of Japanese movies because it really shows the differences between European and Japanese humor. I would recommend this to people who are used to these kinds of things though. I feel like not everyone would be so open into appreciating this type of things. I also thought it was fun recognizing Ryhei from Kanjani8!
I like the high contrast in this movie as well, a lot of clear colours and it was just rather appealing to watch. The plot was rather easy to understand and I thought the ending was surprising. It wasn’t what I thought it would be!
