![]() ![]() It’s just a very cool movie all around, rarely letting up for a moment in its quest to assault the senses with psychedelic imagery and revving engines. The script is cheesy at points, but vaguely self-aware. It’s violent but fun, and there’s probably political commentary thrown in there somewhere. The dark shading and bright color schemes, the over-the-top hair styles and imaginative alien creatures, the quick-cut-editing and crazy landscapes: it’s all fantastically sweet eye-candy, set to an ecstatic musical score. The strengths of Redline lie almost completely in its visuals and fast pacing. ![]() The set-up can be confusing at times due to an influx of minor characters and limited explanation of the obviously complex political and environmental structures. Various secondary stories are introduced, such as the military planet’s worker resistance and JP’s involvement in race-fixing, but the race itself remains the focus and it’s easy to forget that anything else is going on (the script certainly seems to by the end). Sure, there’s a silly romantic/secret-past subplot thrown in there, but it’s never taken very seriously. They’ve created a gorgeously animated, pumped-up sci-fi thriller, and that’s all that’s needed! The characters are slick, and the vehicle designs slicker, with plenty of exaggerated personalities and colorful attachments for an engaging race line-up. This movie is essentially all spectacle and adrenaline, with very little comprehensible or meaningful plot holding it together, but it’s not like the filmmakers are operating under any pretense of depth. Squeezing in ESPN-like profiles of various racers-from an experienced cyborg who’s fused himself with his machine to a pair of scantily clad pop stars hailing from a magical princess planet-there’s some room for satire, too. He cozies up to Sonoshee, a cute green-haired lady who is one of the most serious and intimidating drivers there, and together the two attempt to navigate a strange obstacle course against alien competitors (some with inexplicable magic powers) and large-scale weaponry. Hot shot reckless racer JP makes it to the titular big interstellar race, held on a militaristic planet that hasn’t consented to be the host. It’s an imaginative and enormously entertaining film, just not especially Weird.ĬOMMENTS: The future laid out in Redline is certainly an intriguing one, if completely ludicrous. ![]() WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Armed with an eclectic cast of alien characters and a host of over-the-top shenanigans, Redline might come off as “weird” to someone unfamiliar with anime, but I’d say the stranger humor and visuals fit in pretty squarely with other properties of the genre. Racers “Sweet” JP, the big-haired underdog, and Sonoshee, a single-minded gearhead, are the main focus of the story. PLOT: Set in a distant future and moving between multiple planets, this is a fairly simple tale of a major road race taking place on a militaristic planet that doesn’t want it there. This review first appeared in a slightly different form at Film Forager.įEATURING: Takuya Kamura, Yû Aoi, Tadanobu Asano ![]()
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