Caper movies have their conventions, one being that the crook anti-heroes may get to run their fingers through their loot, but they hardly ever get to keep it. The prototype is Stanley Kubrick's "The Killing" (1956), in which elaborate planning and clockwork execution pay off in a blackly comic reversal of fortunes, with the paper wealth of Sterling Hayden and his motley gang of thieves flying forever out of reach in the wind.
Something similar seems to be in store for the three partners in crime in "Sanbun no Ichi (One Third)," the third feature by comic/actor/director Hiroshi Shinagawa. Winner of the 2014 Golden Shisa Award, the top competition prize at the recent Okinawa International Movie Festival, this action comedy is inspired less by Kubrick's taut noir classic, however, than the dialog-heavy, high-body-count films of Quentin Tarantino.
Based on Hanta Kinoshita's 2012 novel of the same title, "One Third" wears its cinematic influences on its sleeve. The hostess club where much of the action unfolds is called the Honey Bunny — the sobriquet of Amanda Plummer in "Pulp Fiction" — while Tatsuya Fujiwara's film-buff hero frequently references Tarantino's oeuvre, as well as various Hollywood thrillers.