After a week of late, I propose you the cultural break of June. This month I will handle a very good film based on a Japanese anime, Cowboy Bebop.
As the eponymous animated series, Cowboy Bebop the movie tells the tale of bounty hunters in 2071. This time, the four heroes are looking for a bio-terrorist that blew up a truck, releasing a deadly poison and killing dozens.
The scenario is quite classical, however I truly enjoyed this film for its characters full of charisma, the wonderful jazzy soundtrack, the coherent background, the excellent humour and so on.
The story takes place in 2071 on Mars. In the XXIst century, Mankind left its home planet after a large accident that partly destroyed the moon. People thus begun the conquest of the planets next door such as Mars, Venus or else. The Wikipedia article will give you much more details on the background of the anime and film.
The characters are quite impressive. For example, Spike Spiegel, the hero, dresses in a quite old fashioned yet very stylish way. He practices Jeet Kun Do, the martial art once created by Bruce Lee.
As a Bruce Lee fan, I could only notice that this impressive way of fighting was used.
The other heroes of the anime include Jet, a former police officer ; Faye, a charming young lady and Ed a young hacker with talent and a silly behaviour.
The soundtrack is absolutely great with its jazzy tunes and serves perfectly the different scenes. If like me you appreciate this kind of sound, you will be really thrilled by the movie. The titles are simply great and I consider the soundtrack an important plus of this film. The same movie without such a great music wouln’t be as good as it is.
The beginning of the film really will make you want to watch what’s next. This scene, albeit quite simple contains everything that makes me appreciate the whole two hours.
Some thugs are robbing a shop (the main bad guy is just too idiotic and funny), when two bounty hunters, Spike and his friend Jet, enter the place in order to fight and neutralize the thieves. This is done with style and humour. And then, the movie titles begin… just FAN-TAS-TIC !
To conclude, this film really makes me want to buy the anime series. These series are rumoured to be one of the bests in Japanimation. I strongly recommend people liking action films to watch Cowboy Bebop the movie and will conclude by some words that some fan wrote on imdb.com :
I’ll start off by saying that I’m a huge fan of Cowboy Bebop. No other anime has characters that are as real and deep, yet fantastic and archetypical as this series. Every episode in the series manages to be visually stunning and/or humorous and uplifting while at the ame time being beautiful and poetic all in a twenty-minute timeframe. So its hard not to judge Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door under the same light or along the same lines as the series.
That said, the movie is very cool and very enjoyable (…)
The Internet Movie DataBase notes this film 7,6/10 a very good grade.
Personally I give this film 19 out of 20 and think it is typically something that can be watched after a hard day’s work in order to bring the smile back on faces and that can be watched again and again.
Buy this film on Amazon.com or Amazon.fr