‘Firing the Lighter Gun’: A gripping addition to the post-Fukushima canon

Even individuals who’ve by no means learn a phrase of Anton Chekhov will most likely be accustomed to his ideas about firearms. The “Chekhov’s gun” precept — that you simply shouldn’t introduce a rifle, or certainly any aspect, right into a story until it’s going to serve a function in a while — additionally applies in Kohei Sanada’s “Firing the Lighter Gun.” Solely on this case, the weapon in query is definitely a pistol-shaped cigarette lighter toted by the movie’s downtrodden protagonist.

Tatsuya (Yuya Okutsu) isn’t the type of man to hold an actual piece, not less than not beneath regular circumstances. He’s a person who has grown accustomed to internalizing the blows that life offers him. Surrounded by individuals extra cynical and opportunistic than he’s, he can’t assist wanting weak: His tragic flaw is that he’s truly nonetheless able to kindness.

Tatsuya’s hometown, a rural nowhere in Japan’s northeastern Tohoku area, has discovered itself on the sting of a catastrophe zone following an accident at an area nuclear energy plant. (Maybe for authorized causes, that is depicted as a separate mishap that occurred after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear catastrophe.) Whereas these with the means to take action are leaving the world, others are scrambling to capitalize on the inflow of reconstruction funds that the calamity has introduced.