Adrift In Tokyo

Miki Satoshi, whose day job is as a director of hit TV comedy shows and dramas, made his first four films, beginning with In The Pool in 2005, a lot like the way he made his TV shows - terrific gag ideas, but shaky plot structures; likable quirky characters, but they don't develop so much as shamble.
In his fifth film Adrift In Tokyo, Miki puts together a great comedy from start to finish. His two principals - an eternal college student (Odagiri Joe) and a middle-aged debt collector (Miura Tomokazu) - still shamble through the story, but this time they have a definite goal, and their relationship grows as they pursue it.
The gags are still funny, but also reveal character and advance the story. The premise - two strangers spend a few strange days walking around Tokyo - is typically Miki in its improbability, but by the end their journey makes a kind of poetic sense.
Miura, who shot to fame in the 1970s as pop diva Yamaguchi Momoe's love interest in film after hit film, has since matured into a versatile character actor who deftly works both sides of the comedy/drama divide. His turn as the irascible debt collector, Fukuhara, is his best yet. Instead of coasting with prickly-old-guy shtick, Miura creates an inner world for Fukuhara with its own cast-iron logic that may seem bizarre to rational outsiders, but makes absolute sense to Fukuhara himself.
Odagiri's student, Takemura, is at first intimidated by Fukuhara, but at the same time is attracted by his oddball honesty. Something of an oddball himself in the Japanese film industry - like a Johnny Depp with stranger hair - Odagiri is perfectly in tune with what Miura is trying to do, while existing in a different, cooler dimension of his own: Odagiri World.
Takemura begins the film as an 8th-year college student who has somehow managed to accumulate ¥840,000 in debt and has no one to turn to for the cash. One night a stranger in a grubby trenchcoat, Fukuhara, bursts into his apartment, puts him in a chokehold and demands the dough, or else. Takemura agrees to scrape it up, but fails miserably. Then, the day before the debt comes due, Fukuhara comes to him with an unusual offer: walk with him from the Tokyo suburb of Kichijoji to
the city center, for one million yen, paid on successful completion. Takemura has no choice but to go along.
On the first day of the walk, Fukuhara tells Takemura that he killed his wife and intends to give himself up at the Sakuradamon police station downtown. Takemura, a law student, urges Fukuhara to hurry - if the police discover the body before he turns himself in, his punishment will be heavier - but Fukuhara refuses to change his plan: It's Sakuradamon or nothing. They have many adventures and make many stops along the way, including a tempestuous stay at the home of a club mama-san (Koizumi Kyoko) Fukuhara knows.
They are on, not just a hike around picturesque Tokyo landmarks, but a journey of remembrance. Fukuhara, we see, loved his wife and wants to visit spots he associates with her. Then what's this murder business about? Is Fukuhara's crime not quite what it seems?
In Miki's hands, Fukuhara's long march to the clink starts to feel, if not normal, at least possible. Also, the types he and Takemura encounter, including an elderly gent in a white superhero costume and a busker who plays power riffs on an electric guitar as he strolls, make this odd couple look almost average.
Other cities may have better housing or wider sidewalks or cleaner air, but Tokyo, Miki shows us, has more interesting weirdness.