Film Review – PENALTY LOOP: An Interesting Examination of Revenge That Cleverly Repeats its Scenes [Fantasia 2024]

Penalty Loop Review

Penalty Loop (2024) Film Review from the 28th Annual Fantasia International Film Festival, a movie written and directed by Shinji Araki and starring Ryûya Wakaba, Yûsuke Iseya and Malyka Ali.

Penalty Loop, a Japanese film directed by Shinji Araki, will probably give viewers whiplash but offers an intriguing story line about the nature of revenge and the hell world that exists in the lead character knowing that he can’t take down the man who killed his girlfriend. Not definitively, anyway. Ryûya Wakaba plays a young man named Jun who is repeating a day where he hears the same trite information on the radio every morning. Sound familiar? Groundhog Day may have been one of the first movies to perfect the time loop picture, if not the first one to do so. Penalty Loop has a lot of themes that work and a few things that don’t but it’s a film which was made with a lot of attention to detail which works in its favor.

The film opens with the death of Jun’s girlfriend. Jun ends up going to identify her dead body at the crime scene where she was murdered. This movie continues down a path of frustration as the supposed killer, Mizoguchi (Yûsuke Iseya), is easily taken out of the equation only to reappear on consecutive days, still alive with even more awareness of what is happening as Jun tries to poison him, stab him, etc. You have to have a lot of faith that a film like this can maintain interest as it goes on repeating events that have previously occurred with some significant changes in the way the scenes develop.

Penalty Loop throws viewers for a pretty big loop several times throughout its relatively brief running time and there should be a “penalty” for that for the film’s director. The movie focuses on the act of murdering Mizoguchi too frequently when it should be speaking more profoundly about the frustration of seeking revenge and not attaining it. Well, technically Jun often achieves revenge. It’s just that it doesn’t last.

This movie spends a lot of time with Jun in the break room at work manipulating a coffee cup to poison Mizoguchi. At one point, Mizoguchi gets so caught up in figuring things out, he pretends he has the wrong drink and gives it to a woman in the lunch room who proceeds to get sick from drinking it to Jun’s disliking. When the movie takes a twist or two towards the end, we get more scenes with a specific girl but the logistics of everything have changed thanks to the way the dynamics of the plot are integrated into the film’s chain of events.

I have to be perfectly honest in saying that time loop movies often bore me ever since after seeing Groundhog Day. These types of movies spend too much time on the mundane details of the plot rather than the meat and potatoes of the story line. Penalty Loop is better than the typical time loop action movie by just a hair. Its themes of revenge and repetitious depressive emotions are well dealt with and the movie’s scenes change it up enough each time to keep it all intriguing. The big problem is the abundance of graphic violence in the attempted murder sequences.

Penalty Loop has all the ingredients for a better film, though. It’s the performances that give it the human edge it needs to basically work as a whole. Wakaba is easy to sympathize with in the beginning because of all the main character has lost and because he’s figured out that no matter what he does, he’s bound to repeat his past and fight again and again for what is just. The real dramatic tension is provided by the fact that Iseya’s character keeps getting smarter and keeps trying to outsmart his fate. He’s a killer with great intelligence and the plot has fun with this piece of information in terms of developing this particular character.

The direction goes back and forth like a boomerang from being subtle to being over-the-top. While the stylistic choices are certainly interesting, the movie will not please viewers who don’t typically like time loop movies. It’s too sloppy and too smart for its own good, both usually at the same time.

That being said, Penalty Loop has a great deal of complex themes that make it a curiosity piece for Japanese action movie fans. It would have been nice if Jun had more layers to him but the director fleshes out this character through the things he doesn’t achieve versus the things that he does accomplish. It’s the film’s unique approach to its familiar structure that makes it all the more compelling for people who think this movie may interest them.

Rating: 6.5/10

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