Japan isn’t known for being friendly to foreign film productions: Even big-budget Hollywood projects with Japan-centric stories are often shot elsewhere due to red tape, among other reasons.
Donie Ordiales, a Filipino director and long-time resident in Japan, nonetheless found the ways and means to film his patchily plotted thriller “Crosspoint” here and release it in the Philippines late last year. The film was a box-office hit, with the casting of local TV star Carlo Aquino drawing fans.
The story — a washed-up Filipino actor and a broke Japanese businessman team up to capture a creepy serial killer — would seem to lend itself to buddy-movie comedy, but everyone plays it totally straight to occasionally ludicrous effect.
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