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Directed by Shinichiro Watanabe
Produced by Sunrise INC.
Spike, Jet, Ed and Faye are entering an uncharted galaxy the world of feature length movies and as navigation goes in strange territory the crew of the Bebop slalom majestically. Put simply Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door is brilliant while not reaching the dizzy heights of the series in terms of overall quality it still manages to rank highly as a brilliant example of Japanese animation. You’d think that perhaps Cowboy Bebop would fail where so many other anime series have [in the motion picture debut] however this is no Death and Rebirth. Watanabe-san knows how to direct a good movie and more importantly knows how to direct a good fight sequence. The fights are perhaps the most important aspect of the movie because without them it’d just be pure conversations, little bits of fan service and comedy and even then it’d be ace!
The story concerns the gang hunting down a small fry hacker who’s been employed by a not so small ex militant. The ex militant plans to release deadly nano-machines into the atmosphere destroying the brains the brains of the living and reducing the globe to a bleak world populated by zombies. Needless to say Faye, Spike, Ed and Jet have to stop him.
To be honest there's not much I can say in this review about character and mechanical designs that hasn't been commented on in our review of Cowboy Bebop the series. So I'm afraid this review might follow our recent trend of been a tad lazy and not been too long however rest assured that the characters are still of the same high quality and the ships still look great!
The animation in this movie is top notch some great effects are used such as motion blurring and the camera work is fantastic the movie has a very stylised feel to it [more so than the series] sometimes characters legs seem to extend to phenomenal lengths sparking memories of old Lupin III movies or perhaps reminding people of Watanabe’s work in The Animatrix. The music too is done to a degree of polish and excellence rarely seen in an anime it seems that Yoko Kanno can truly support any scene with fitting music she has outdone herself on this project.
To be objective for a minute there are a few things that annoyed me about the movie firstly it did not feel like a real movie instead it feels like an extended episode. Also of note is the slight change in Spike’s personality he fears for his life at points in the movie making him [in my opinion] seem less cool. If the scriptwriter was trying to inject some sort of soul into Spike they did not succeed instead this breaks an already established personality but by no means do these small shortcomings ruin what is otherwise a great piece of cinema.
In closing. Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door is a fantastic example of how to couple a series with a movie. At worst it is simply brilliant.
Eight out of Ten
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