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17-year olf Luchino (Luchino Fujisaki) lives in an underground world that
goes so deep beneath the surface that elevators are the most common means of
travelling, a world that is totally controlled by the Surveillance Bureau that
has cameras posted everywhere & shows zero tolerance towards trespassers,
so when she carelessly throws away a cigarette butt, it's a felony on 2
accounts: First she is not old enough to smoke, & second the butt
accidently caused an explosion ... Luchino however knows nothing about the
explosion & heads for the next elevator to go to school ... but then the
Security Bureau has the splendid idea to use that elevator cabin for a convicts
transport, which maybe wouldn't be that bad wouldn't they take the convicts to
their execution & wouldn't they - having nothing tzop lose - make every
attempt to breat out ... eventually they bring the lift to a halt, kill their
guard, break free of their chains, & prepare to rape the female passengers
... only Luchino keeps a cool head, eventually gets her hands on the guard's
gun & shoots one of the convicts ... it's only then that she tips over,
mainly because it brings up memories of her killing her abusive father in self
defense 3 years ago. For some reason though the other passengers are not too
grateful about what she did, mainly because she's a tad weird, & when
eventually, co-passenger Sawatsukumori (Ikuma Saisho) kills the other convict
in a frenzy, he tries to either blame the killing on Luchino or buy false
testimonies from everyone that he didn't do it (as this would be considered
brutal murder regardless of the circumstances). To not being caught,
Sawatsukumori even smashes the communications system, making the situation of
all the passengers even more desperate. Soon all the passengers start acting
weird, & Luchino, who has telepathic abilities, starts reading their minds,
& learns for example that the woman with her babycart has actually killed
her baby some time ago but keeps collecting child support, that the
headphone-wearing teenager is actually a spy for the Surveillance Bureau, after
yet another passenger, Sawatsukumori, who is a microbiologist wanting to
sell bacteriological weapons to a terrorist organisation. The headhone wearing
kid, who also has telepathic abilities, even convinces Luchino that
Sawatsukumori is about to release some deadly virus right now, & she kills
him in self defense ... only to then find out that what she thought was the
deadly virus was actually a container containing Sawatsukumori's heartpills.
Surveillance Bureau enters the cabin only moments later, & they arrest her,
even if that means killing more passengers ... Later, in an examination of
the case, the headphone kid denies having telepathic poswers, having told her
anything via thought transmission or that such thing exists at all. & the
suppoosedly dead baby of the woman seems to be pretty much alive ... so it
might be that Luchino is plainly mad - & as a result of this, she is
convicted & about to be executed, which in this underground world means
being taken to the surface by elevator, where she ahs to fend for herself ...
& the elevator leads to contemporary Tokyo. The most remarkable
thing about this movie is probably that it is able to create a whole
totalitarian world, while being confined mostly to the space of an elevator
cabin (that is very much a vital part of that world though), where all the
passengers tend to react abnormally (as people in elevators often do). However,
director Hiroki Yamaguchi does not restrict himself to creating this world
& preach about it, but incorporates it into a suspenseful story that is
full of unusual twists & turns, & in the end questions large parts of
the story , leaving them open for (re-)interpretation ... which he does without
being pretentious. In all, it's great & unusual science fiction
entertainment.
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