Spe­cial Actors – first-look review

When your break­out fea­ture as a writer/​director is pred­i­cat­ed on nar­ra­tive twists and sud­den aes­thet­ic left turns, there can be pres­sure for your next film to retain a sim­i­lar ele­ment of sur­prise. Shinichi­ro Ueda’s Spe­cial Actors is his solo fol­low-up to One Cut of the Dead (he co-direct­ed anoth­er fea­ture in-between), the inde­pen­dent Japan­ese zom­bie hor­ror of sorts that earned more than one thou­sand times its bud­get back in its home coun­try, and became a word-of-mouth hit overseas.

For the sake of those still yet to see it, this review will avoid explic­it spoil­ers for One Cut of the Dead; suf­fice it to say that Spe­cial Actors was always going to strug­gle to live up to its pre­de­ces­sor. That said, the results are large­ly enter­tain­ing and inventive.

Kazu­to (Kazu­to Osawa) has had a life­long dream of being an actor, with much of that ambi­tion stem­ming from his love of Res­cue­man, a camp super­hero series he still rewatch­es on VHS as an adult. How­ev­er, some­thing is hin­der­ing Kazuto’s career path: he suf­fers from a ner­vous con­di­tion that caus­es him to faint at the slight­est hint of stress. Not the best trait for stay­ing in char­ac­ter dur­ing audi­tions, and cer­tain­ly not ide­al when cast­ing direc­tors start lay­ing into his poor line delivery.

After being fired from his day job, Kazu­to bumps into his estranged broth­er Hiro­ki (Hiro­ki Kono), who pro­pos­es that he join his line of work. He takes him to Spe­cial Actors, an agency that employs actors to stage every day, ordi­nary sit­u­a­tions: be it stand­ing in at a wed­ding, laugh­ing at a film fes­ti­val screen­ing, cry­ing at a CEO’s funer­al, or pre­tend­ing to be a mug­ger so a boyfriend can look tough.

Rel­a­tive­ly low-stress work all around, until the agency is hired for an elab­o­rate mis­sion by a young woman whose sis­ter has been indoc­tri­nat­ed by a cult. She says the cult is intent on tak­ing over the inn left to the two sis­ters by their deceased par­ents. The agency is tasked with infil­trat­ing the organ­i­sa­tion to extri­cate the sis­ter, with a ful­ly script­ed plan to pull off the con.

It feels fit­ting that Ueda has gone down the heist com­e­dy route, giv­en how One Cut of the Dead grad­u­al­ly reveals itself to be so much about the exe­cu­tion and impro­vi­sa­tion of a mad­cap plan. Stay­ing clear of any sin­gle-take showi­ness, Spe­cial Actors is com­par­a­tive­ly less ambi­tious in its aes­thet­ic; arguably even visu­al­ly flat despite a seem­ing­ly big­ger bud­get to play with. It suc­ceeds on infec­tious ener­gy above any­thing else, fea­tur­ing a num­ber of high­ly enter­tain­ing com­ic set-pieces.

Spe­cial Actors is also dri­ven by a sim­i­lar ambiva­lence towards the dis­tinc­tion between per­for­mance and real­i­ty as its meta pre­de­ces­sor. Like with One Cut of the Dead, it’s a farce that lingers in the mind thanks to the ideas it toys with, and, as is the case with many a good con artist flick, war­rants repeat view­ings for the way it plays with your per­cep­tion until the very end.