re:mote voices

Title: Cowboy Be-Bop
[Tengoku No Tobira]
Cast: Steven Blum, Beau Billingslea, Wendee Lee, Melissa Charles, Jennifer Hale
Director: Shinichirô Watanabe

when one of the crew of the cowboy be-bop tries to collect the bounty on a hacker she ends up witnessing a terrorist attack instead. this accidentally gives them an advantage when it comes to trying to collect on the unprecendentedly large bounty put on the terrorist's capture by the new martian government.

this is the set up for the cowboy be-bop movie, based on the popular animated series. other than in comic form, i'm not really aware of cowboy be-bop having really filtered through to the UK, so the week long run of the film is the first contact i have had with the concept.

with the pursuit of terrorists and hackers the film covers some classic thriller/sf ground. each of the bounty hunters has their own character, and speciality - setting them off on their own paths trying to find clues. jet black is an ex-cop, using his contacts to know what the police know about the attack. spike spiegel is something of a cowboy, with yakuza style, and tries to track down the virus that was released by the attack, finding some link to a big chemical company. faye valentine has big breasts and few clothes, and erm some other talents that allow her to track down the man that she saw at the scene of the attack? Ed and Ein round out the group, one a child hacker, the other a preternatully intuitive data dog. the official site has character summaries which flesh out the group, though much of the depth of who the people are doesn't come across in the film.

through the course of the film we have a dark and mysterious villain, conflicted femme fatale, explosions, space ships, nano-tech, terrorism, moroccan bazaars, martial arts, secret conspiracies and loads of other stuff. so that the film is filled with mad detail which is on the whole well animated. the film is in japanese, with english subtitles, though many of the captions and on-screen text of the film are in english. as is the soundtrack, which starts to become quite annoying at times. the soundtrack being song orientated, and overwhelming at times, so that it is perhaps the only real problem with the film.