Yoshihiro Nakamura has made a mix of indie and commercial films, from the multilayered, end-of-the-world thriller "Fish Story" (2008) to the hospital mystery "General Rouge no Gaisen" ("The Triumphant General Rouge," 2009). Whatever the subject, he always injects his personal obsessions, from the shape-shifting nature of truth to the connectedness of human beings, even across decades and generations.
His latest, "Golden Slumber," boasts a man-on-the-run story with many Hollywood predecessors (Alfred Hitchcock's "North by Northwest" is one, Doug Liman's "The Bourne Identity," another), but Nakamura uses it, as always, for his own purposes. More than Hollywood thrillers, it's closer in spirit to "The Shawshank Redemption" and "Groundhog Day," with their messages of hope and renewal.
His everyman hero is Aoyagi (Masato Sakai), a delivery-truck driver from Miyagi Prefecture who is reuniting with old college chum Morita (Hidetaka Yoshioka) when something explodes nearby. The new prime minister, riding in an open car, has been assassinated — and Aoyagi becomes the prime suspect. That is, he is the designated patsy of an elaborate plot in which the hapless Morita was involved.