The Professional: Golgo
13 (Animé film)
Picture: C+
Sound: B- Extras: C Film: B-
In one of the most interesting, graphic and brutal Animé
features we have seen to date, The Professional: Golgo 13 (1983) is a
classic of the art form that has aged pretty well nearly a quarter century
later. The son of a wealthy oil
industrialist is killed by the title assassin, one of the best in the business,
for reasons unknown. He gets away, but
the oil baron is determined to get revenge in a plot that also involves Italian
gangsters, seductresses, more wealthy people, an evil criminal mastermind and
some other deadly assassins. There is
always something new and interesting to see, feeling like the mature next step after
the one, only, original, great Speed Racer.
The film is also very graphic and appropriately so as it
makes the dark world all the more believable.
The stylized action is typical of the genre, with backgrounds that spin
by at fast rates while fights and other action are in slow motion. Recalling the kind of pulp fiction Tarantino
missed, Golgo is a completely believable killing machine, but also like that
pulp writing is the tendency throughout for the story not to come together as a
readerly narrative needs to. The result
is that style saves the day often when substance does not. Otherwise, director Osamu Dezaki and writer
Shukei Nagasaka (based on the Takao Saito graphic novel comic books) deliver an
enduring winner.
The letterboxed 1.78 X 1 image has some CG in it from the
early 1980s and is some of the first ever in a Japanese production, but has
more of the kind of dark, dirty, hand-drawn kind of Animé art that put the
Japanese on the map with this kind of animation. Though not as detailed or as vivid as Akira (reviewed
elsewhere on this site), it is truly atmospheric and a cut above the majority
of the work in its field. The audio is
available in Dolby Digital 2.0 & 5.1 English mixes, but they have lame,
inferior replacement music that ruins the film, so the Japanese Dolby 5.1 mix is
the only way to go and the subtitles are good, but those with 16 X 9 playback
will see those cut off sometimes.
Extras include an art gallery, trailers for this and 6 other Urban
Vision Animé DVDs and a brief interview with the co-producer Mata Yamamoto in
English who made this possible.
Finally, some solid adult Animé that is absolutely not for
children! Hope we see more of this.
- Nicholas Sheffo
