Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes (2021) Review

Love Horror Frightfest 2021

Kato (Kazunari Tosa) closes up his café for the day and heads upstairs to his flat, where he discovers his television monitor is showing an image of himself, speaking from two minutes into the future. Initially baffled, Kato soon gets to grips with the time paradox but reckons without the complications which ensue when his circle of friends shows up, each of them eager to test the possibilities of knowing the near future. With the fabric of time being twisted ever more with each temporal jump, this probably isn’t going to end well…
Comparisons to One Cut Of The Dead have been made and those are reasonably well founded. Distributor Third Window Films clearly has an eye for clever, one-take mind scramblers, although that concept is stretched to even greater lengths here, with the single take’s running time approaching double that of One Cut’s thirty-five minutes.

There are moments within the narrative which also serve as a point at which a cut could possibly be made but whether or not the entire movie is a one take miracle is ultimately the province of technical mastery and record books. Even with multiple takes, the overall effect is still a seamless, breathless comedy adventure which has its characters step in and out of the action with an incredible confidence.

Those opening hundred and twenty seconds drop our hero – and by extension, the viewer – into a bizarre and confusing world where explanations are in short supply but with each passing two-minute vignette Kato and then his friends gradually get to grips with nested time structures and the Droste effect. The smart – but never smart arsed – screenplay by Makoto Ueda introduces those potentially brain melting concepts in a way that will induce a workout of your grey matter but won’t leave your head hurting. There is, of course, a main character who knows these things and is only too eager to explain.

It’s no surprise that bulk of the cast has worked together before, belonging to the Europe Kikaku theatre company. There’s a level of trust and camaraderie between the players that is clearly borne out of spending time around each other in a variety of productions. Their first foray into feature films is performed perfectly across the board, with each character getting their moments in the spotlight and coming across as naturalistically as a group of friends would.

They annoy each other, they play pranks, their decisions are sometimes good, sometimes not so but they’re a fun set of folks to be around and when their world is eventually threatened there’s no question who you’re going to side with despite their initial, somewhat goofy faffing around with time travel escalating into something far more serious and possibly life-ending. Despite a lean towards the dramatic in the latter stages the tone is kept as light-hearted as possible for most of the running time.

That isn’t to say that the piece still allows room for the odd philosophical aside and reflective dialogue about the moral and ethical implications of altering both the future and, indeed, the past from the future. These questions are never dealt with in an overly heavy manner. Comedic chronological complications are the order of the day here with a smattering of race against the clock thriller elements thrown in for good measure.

The story even manages to weave in a romantic subplot as Kato, egged on gleefully by those around him, clumsily attempts to woo his neighbour Megumi, played wonderfully by Aki Asakura who avoids every single one of those tedious Manic Pixie Dream Girl cliches. Megumi is a contradiction of the confident and the awkward, the fun and the serious. There’s something immediately ordinary and yet special about her and it’s easy to see why Kato believes she’s both amazing and far too good for him.

Very little of this detracts from the steadily growing mayhem and the fact that it was shot on iPhones just adds to the intimacy of the enterprise. It’s easy to feel you’re standing just out of shot in the locations themselves or following them a couple of paces behind as they launch into their next enthusiastic venture into what’s just around the corner.

To reveal much more of the plot would spoil a jubilant, charming, unrelentingly good-natured slice of sci-fi which will warm the heart and tickle the funny bone. The lack of budget is more than made up for by the breezy, consistently imaginative shifts in plotting, the amusing dialogue and a set of protagonists it’s easy to love. You’ll be surprised at just how many amazing things can be packed into two minutes.

Movie Rating:★★★★½ 

Trailer:

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Darren Gaskell

Darren is a writing machine, producing content for a range of channels. You can catch more of his content at The Strange Colour Of Deej's Reviews and The Horrocist. You can also follow him on Twitter.

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  • […] “To reveal much more of the plot would spoil a jubilant, charming, unrelentingly good-natured slice of sci-fi which will warm the heart and tickle the funny bone. The lack of budget is more than made up for by the breezy, consistently imaginative shifts in plotting, the amusing dialogue and a set of protagonists it’s easy to love. You’ll be surprised at just how many amazing things can be packed into two minutes.” Read the rest of the review HERE […]

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