AFF04–Steamboy/Saw

Tonight was total geek night at the Film Festival. I got to get my anime AND my gore geek on! Too bad about the choices, though. Well, one of them, anyway. First let’s hit the good one. STEAMBOY

I have to admit to becoming a big ol’ anime geek in the last year or so. I even have pending anime pages. (Coming soon to a website near you!) So all I really needed to hear was “anime” and I was in line for this movie. It didn’t hurt that it was directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, director of the uber-classic Akira.

Steamboy is actually Ray Steam. He is the son/grandson to two of the biggest geniuses in 1866 England. (And he’s not too shabby himself.) These guys are so amazing that they have been in America working with something called the O’Hara Foundation. When Ray gets a package from his grandfather that says “Do not let this fall into the hands of the Foundation,” he knows he has to run for his life.

Then his father and grandfather show up and things get more complicated. Is his grandfather a crazy old man who wants to stand in the way of progress? Or is his father a Darth Vader-like man/machine who wants only to build weapons of mass destruction with their new steam-powered invention?

Either way, Steamboy is up for a grand adventure in the tradition of Indiana Jones and, um, the Rocketeer.

The story here is a little naive, but, as I said, this is supposed to be an old-fashioned adventure movie. It’s always a bit utopianistic of people to think that science is only meant to help people. Unfortunately, most science comes out of military operations. Just ask Mulder and Scully.

Nevertheless, this is a really fun movie. It’s even a bit sad at times. Hell, the kid has to choose between his father and his grandfather! How hellish would that be?

The animation, though, is fucking amazing! Take the leaps that Akira made and multiply them by about 1000. At least. I know it’s been a long time, but we can still compare them. Hand-drawn and CGI combine nearly perfectly. The “camera” moves in ways that make it look like it was filmed instead of drawn. Absolutely perfect in every way.

It was a little weird to see/hear a bunch of English folks speaking Japanese, but I guess since Ray looked like Kaneda from Akria it was ok.

If you’re an anime fan, this is a movie that you HAVE to see. It may not be a perfect film, but it’s a lot of fun and it almost made me wish that electricity had never been discovered. (That steam sure was a powerful tool. I fully believe that we would have steam-powered DVD players if these folks had actually lived.) This movie was worth every bit of the $20 million and eight years that it cost to make it. (It’s now the most expensive anime ever made.)

SAW

This movie, on the other hand, is one that only gore hounds should see. It’s not as gory as I was led to believe (but, then again, I’m kind of immune to gore by now), but it’s still not for the squeamish.

Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) is a mild-mannered oncologist who has committed a few indiscretions in his life. His marriage is falling apart, but he still loves his wife and little girl.

But now it looks as though that might all be over. He’s trapped in a shithole bathroom with a guy named Adam (Leigh Whannell—Axel from The Matrix Reloaded). He has to kill Adam before 6:00 or else his wife and daughter will die. But the two men are chained to opposite corners of the room with the only weapon being a gun in the middle of the room in the hand of a man who has just blown his brains out.

The two men are trapped in a elaborate game created by a super-intelligent serial killer who never actually kills his victims. He finds ways to make them kill each other.

It’s a great premise. And, in fact, it could have been a great movie. Unfortunately it is an over-played, over-edited piece of film that will only appeal to certain members of society.

There’s really nothing wrong with most of the performances. Leigh is alright as an addled slacker who has no clue why he has been locked in this room with a complete stranger who now has to kill him. Danny Glover is actually very good as an obsessed cop who is after the killer even after he’s been pushed off the force.

The weak link was actually Cary Elwes. For years I’ve thought that he was kind of unjustly overlooked as someone who could be at least a minor player in Hollywood. But apparently most casting directors know that if he’s not playing a British rogue he’s just no good. He seems to be playing the same character here that he did in Liar, Liar. And that’s a bad thing. When he’s acting with his daughter I expected him to bring out The Claw.

The editing was WAY over the top, too. There was a lot of that fast motion mumbo-jumbo that goth thrillers are doing a lot of in the past ten years. You know, where the faces are just a little bit distorted because they’re moving really fast? This time, though, it was two people chasing each other in cars. It didn’t work.

The end of the movie started to get pretty intense, but as soon as the inevitable happens it starts to get laughable. I heard the line, “Are you alright?” one too many times and it always got a good laugh because the people were very obviously NOT alright. And every line that Lawrence and Adam had for each other at the end was funny…and I’m sure it wasn’t supposed to be.

The very end, though, had an interesting twist that I didn’t really see coming. What patience that guy had!

All in all, a real disappointment. I wanted this to be another Seven. Too bad that it tried too hard to be just that.

See this only if you’re into that sort of thing, but don’t expect a movie as good as the trailer.