THE MAGIC HOUR is a valentine to Japanese film fans who love soft-hearted, traditional fare steeped in cinema lore and history. It's set in the present day, though most of it could easily have been set in the past.
To slip away from the talons of a tough, businesslike gangster (Toshiyuki Nishida), a handsome but desperate underling (Kôichi Satô) vouches to find a shadowy assassin - and has to find the man in five days. Sato kidnaps a film camera, poses as a new director, and creates a drama within a movie to try to fool his gangster senior. As often happens with this kind of deception, things get out of hand very quickly - and it's to the film's credit that it keeps your attention and interest. The director's warm feeling for the mythology of film - and crime pot-boilers - makes for an agreeable entertainment.
Of course, the more you examine the plot, the more THE MAGIC HOUR loses credibility - and a lot of it. If you look it from the standpoint of dramatic logic, it works for the most part; but if you're willing to view the drama uncritically, you may begin to like its appealing performances and old-style approach to gangsterism. (Instead of killing off its cast with bullets, they get cement shoes - the kind of low-tech punishment you'd expect from '30s and '40s crime dramas.)
A cute supporting role for Haruka Ayase, though it would have been nice to see more of her.
