Gambling with reality, double or nothing

The title of Satoru Isaka's new film, "Doubles," is ironic, but appropriate. Its two heroes -- a middle-aged locksmith (Kenichi Hagiwara) and young computer nerd (Kazuma Suzuki) -- are unlikely partners in crime who take an immediate and loud dislike to each other. But while arguing over everything from their botched robbery to personal hygiene, they come to see that they are more alike than they could have ever imagined, or admitted, when they began the longest night of their lives.

Both are products of a society in which isolation is the rule rather than the exception, in which human relationships, even the most intimate, have become fragmentary and conditional. No one, they realize, really cares whether they live or die. Maybe they only have each other.

This theme of social atomization, the war of all against all, is also present in Isaka's earlier films, most notably his brilliant 1996 debut "Focus." In "Doubles" his take on it is more comic, though his vision of contemporary Japan remains just as dark.