Japanese films have been celebrating the salaryman for decades now, sometimes comically and sometimes dramatically, with the blue-suited heroes framed as latter-day samurai, grimly fighting their battles in the boardroom.
However, in “Kiba: The Fangs of Fiction,” Daihaichi Yoshida’s brainy drama of intrigue set in the publishing world, the loyal, self-sacrificing corporate warriors of stereotype are gone, replaced by hard-nosed turf fighters and savvy ladder climbers ultimately out for No. 1.
The film is not an exercise in cynicism, though. Its plot, which revolves around the fate of two print publications, and its shoutouts to the brick-and-mortar bookstore may strike those used to consuming books and magazine articles in an endless stream of online content as retro — or irrelevant.