Cowboy Bebop: The Movie - Film Review
Plot
Days before Halloween 2071, a terrorist named Vincent (Daran Norris) blows up a tanker truck releasing a deadly virus that kills hundreds on Mars. Fearing an even bigger biochemical attack, a very high bounty is offered for the arrest of this terrorist. Bored and short on money, the Bebop crew are out for that reward.
Review
Cowboy Bebop turned 20 years old about a week ago and I didn't find out until yesterday, so I decided I would review it's film adaptation Cowboy Bebop: The Movie or Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door in Japan. The name was changed to Cowboy Bebop: The Movie in other countries because of legal issues over the title because Knockin' on Heaven's Door is a song by Bob Dylan, who the villain is partially based on. Instead of coming up with a new subtitle, they just added "The Movie" to the title.
Speaking of music, one thing that comes over from the show into the movie (along with everything from the show) is that the music is amazing. Something amazing about the opening credits, it is believed that they used rotoscoping for the animation, no they did not, Cowboy Bebop just has really talented animators. Also in the credits, you can see animated versions of the English voice actors Beau Billingslea (Jet), Wendee Lee (Faye), and Steve Blum (Spike).
Also, the cold opening before the credits with Spike and Jet stopping a convenience store robbery is amazing too.
Some other awesome things that came from the show into here were the fight choreography and it's animation. I'd say the animation in here is better than the animation in the show.
Before I continue on with the actual movie, I want to go into my history with the show Cowboy Bebop, which does not go back very far, only to 2015. In 2015, I was 13 and I had heard about this anime called Cowboy Bebop and that it had a movie and I heard really good things about them and I wanted to see them, so I picked up the show and movie on DVD with some Christmas money and stayed up the entire night watching this show and the movie. I started at like 4:00 or 4:30 in the afternoon and finished at around 7 in the morning. It was definitely worth it. Also, I got sick the next morning but that's not important. I've see the entire show twice and would love to sit through it again. Cowboy Bebop is my favorite anime, I haven't watched too much anime, but I definitely plan on changing that because I've been into anime for a few years. I actually got into anime around 2011 with Ponyo. I have a few manga books and Your Name was my favorite movie of 2017.
Cowboy Bebop is an anime you can really like even if you don't like anime, it's that good.
The main negative I have with the movie is that it is a little too long in some parts, mostly in the second act. Some of it could've been trimmed a little bit, but hey, I just deal with it. But at least the third act really starts to pick up the pace and continue.
Some of my favorite parts are Ed (Melissa Fahn) and Ein searching for Lee Sampson, an accomplice of Vincent and they come across a transvestite who mistakes Ed for a boy, and a man who threatens to shoot her for asking for Halloween candy the day before Halloween.
The scene with Vincent, Spike, and Elektra (Jennifer Hale) on the monorail is great. But it is a little weird how Vincent shoots Spike and throws him out of the monorail window and into the water and he survives. Vincent unleashes chemicals onto the monorail and he kills people with it, only for Elektra to realize she is immune. Also, later in the movie, Vincent ties up Faye in an apartment, kisses her and it gives her the antidote for the poison.
In the movie, we have a montage of Spike looking for clues about this biochemical weapon and he's searching through a Morocco-like area of Mars and a man lights Spike's cigarette with a lighter that looks like a hand grenade. The grenade lighter doesn't add to the plot, it just looks cool.
In that scene, the same man gives Spike a vase for seemingly no reason, but when he gets back to the Bebop, there is a small marble that has some of this chemical weapon in it.
One scene is when Faye meets Lee at an arcade and he's playing this really weird looking light gun game and she shoots the arcade game, destroying it, and Lee gets angry, saying that he never got to see Spokey Dokey and starts using a keyboard belt, which I wouldn't say is a way to make hackers look cool, and hacks every single screen into playing a message about an event happening on Halloween.
I also really like the scene where Spike and Elektra are fighting and he's disguised himself as a janitor. It's entertaining and has enough dialogue to keep it interesting.
Let's talk about the characters. Spike is still just as awesome as he is in the show, he's awesome, funny, tough, and Steve Blum is great as Spike Spiegel.
Beau Billingslea is really great as Jet, but I wish he had more to do here, I know he's the oldest of the Bebop crew (if you don't count Faye's cryogenic freezing), but come on, he's still got lots of fight left in him!
Melissa Fahn is great as Ed. Ed is a great character on the show, she's funny, hilarious, awesome. She is the one who finds the marble in the vase and studies it. Even though this came out after the show ended, she's still part of the Bebop crew, as this is set between the sessions Cowboy Funk and Brain Scratch. My favorite scene with her in the movie is the one where she and Ein are searching for Lee.
Wendee Lee is back as Faye, and she's still awesome as usual. If you've never seen the show and only watched this, you might think Faye would die in Vincent's apartment because of the chemicals, but no, it's set between two of the sessions. The kiss that Vincent forced with her gave her the antidote and if she did die, that would anger a lot of fans.
Now I want to talk about Vincent and Elektra. Vincent is the main villain of the movie and Elektra was his ex trying to take him down. Vincent was the only survivor of experiments done to soldiers during the War on Titan to build immunity to nanomachines that the military were building which gave him amnesia, he only started to remember things right before he died on the Eiffel Tower on Mars. His plan was to release the nanomachines throughout Mars and leaving only a handful of survivors.
Elektra was a veteran in the War on Titan where she met and had a short-term relationship with Vincent where he gave her the antidote to the nanomachines. She is unaware of this until Vincent releases them on the monorail and she survives. She just happens to meet Spike by chance, and after a few more chance meetings and the scene on the monorail, she decides to team up with the Bebop crew and take down Vincent.
So, the day is saved and they can go on to Session 23 where they will never mention these events again.
Overall, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie is a great anime film for fans who really know the show well and a really good film for those who don't know much about it. Just didn't have to be nearly two hours long though.
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie gets a 9/10.
I feel like I'm giving that rating to everything lately, but that's how I feel about these movies. I have yet to give a 10/10 to a movie this year, I know I reviewed Captain America: Civil War this year and gave that a 10/10, but that movie came out two years ago.
Stay tuned tomorrow for reviews of Iron Man and Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood. Due to some scheduling stuff, I won't be seeing Avengers: Infinity War until a few days after it's release. So tomorrow, I'll be reviewing all the movies in the MCU I have not already reviewed, which is everything except for Civil War, Ragnarok and Black Panther.
Previous review - Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
Next review - Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
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