Sweet Rain

Starring: Takeshi Kaneshiro, Manami Konishi, Ken Mitsuishi, Takuya Ishida, Sumiko Fuji

Director: Kakehi Masaya

Category: IIA (Japanese)

Kakehi Masaya's feature film debut, adapted from Kotaro Isaka's popular comic Accuracy of Death, is about a starry-eyed 'death god' who loathes rain and regards fluffy pop music as the 'greatest invention'. He charms the women he is supposed to carry into the netherworld, and conjures humanity out of a hardened yakuza hell-bent on avenging the murder of his chief.

But Sweet Rain is no Japanese take of Meet Joe Black, the soppy tale which has Brad Pitt playing a dashing Grim Reaper. Here, the urbane incarnation of the deadly doom-merchant with the genteel surname of Chiba ('A Thousand Leaves' in Japanese) is not an excuse for sickly-sweet romance.

Made up of Chiba's experience in judging the suitability of three candidates for premature deaths, Sweet Rain offers competent storytelling tying up what appears to be three disparate episodes spanning four decades. Firstly, there is the 27-year-old Fujiki (Manami Konishi, right with Takeshi Kaneshiro), a meek hotline operator in 1988 who has withdrawn from the world ever since the car crash which killed her fiance. Then there's Fujita (Ken Mitsuishi), a mobster in 2008 who's trying to bring down the man who killed his elder with the help of the orphaned Akatsu (Takuya Ishida).