A small oasis of humanity in the desperate life of a big city.

Rating: 9/10 (26 May 2007)

Jet - lagged, bleary eyed and jaundiced,Bill Murray arrives in Tokyo to star in a whisky commercial and,incidentally,pick up a $2,000,000 fee. As he stumbles out of his cab at the hotel a huge poster of himself confronts him.It is quickly established here that he is married,well -known and well -off and rather blase.He is courteous to the over eager Japanese company people who meet him but purposely distant.It's clear he doesn't give much of himself away. Scarlett Johansson is staying at the same hotel.22 years old,recently married Ivy Leaguer whose husband is a photographer on an assignment to shoot rock bands.She is far cleverer than he,and although she loves him she is beginning to wonder whether being married to him was such a good idea after all.He is totally self - absorbed. Miss Coppola transmits this information to us almost before we know it,whilst we are being distracted by the garish aspect of the city itself which becomes the third character if you like,a vital component in the movie and the catalyst that slowly but inexorably brings Miss Johansson and Mr Murray together.He is superficially pleasant enough to encourage strangers to talk to him in a bar but withdraws very quickly.When Miss Johansson walks over to him he is willing to endure a two minute encounter but not much more.As their paths cross by accident or design in the claustrophobic world of the hotel they become more aware of each other's situation.Tentatively,very tentatively,they begin to reach out to one another. They are refugees from "The City" both as in Tokyo itself and the "city" as in the values system as exemplified by the culture that encourages a young man to make a living sucking up to rock stars and photographing them and an old man to make $2000,OOO by drinking iced tea and pretending it's whisky.They are companions in disenchantment and alienation. They hang out and just talk together about anything and everything,trivial or important,impersonal or intimate.It soon becomes clear that by movie conventions they should fall in love or at least have sex together,but Murray knows more than Johansson that what they have is too precious to risk.He is not averse to extra - marital sex as he demonstrates by sleeping with a bar singer,but he is wise enough to know the difference between sex and love. In the end of course they have to part,which they do stiltedly and formally at the hotel as he gets a taxi to the airport.On the journey through the city he spots a blonde head in the crowd and orders the driver to stop.As he follows the girl you begin to wonder whether Miss Coppola will use the movie cliché and have her turn around and be someone else,but no,she's too honest for that .They hold each other and kiss for the first and last time.Words pass between them but are lost in the sound of the traffic,perhaps a last comment on how big city life has suborned all human feeling and that human beings themselves have become merely a small and not particularly important part of a great noisy,overcrowded corrupt and corrupting inferno.