flanger216 Reviews

Akira (1988)

Essential Anime

[10/10 · 9 June 2003]

Akira is the epitome of anime: uber-violent, complicated, and, especially for us western viewers, cryptic and difficult to decipher. Of course, it also features an end-all, kick-in-the-head, apocalyptic ending from hell that should remain with you for quite a while. To put it in terms of American movies, Akira is essentially an ultra-violent Blade Runner ingrained with heavily Japanese subtexts (search for identity, suffocation from the urban sprawl, fascism, atomic destruction) and with some 2001-tinged metaphysics thrown in at the end for good measure (and to confuse most viewers even more). It's all too sprawling and unfocused to be real a classic, but Akira still remains as one of the most, albeit sporadically, impactful sci-fi/action movies ever made. It also set the mold for just about every sci-fi anime made since, though it would be 13 years before Rin's "Metropolis" (2001) came along and finally turned the disparate elements of sci-fi anime into a truly excellent movie.

The Abyss (1989)

Cameron Does Spielberg

[6/10 · 10 May 2003]

A slight slip-up inbetween the brilliant "Aliens" and "Terminator 2," James Cameron's "The Abyss" is an indulgent and overlong foray into themes and techniques much better explored in Cameron's aforementioned classics. For instance, while Cameron again demonstrates his mastery over tense, cramped interiors, he never even approaches the pulse-pounding fervor of Aliens, and the occasional action pieces, particularly a dull underwater-probe duel, completely lack the hyper-kinetic flow of Terminator 2. Of course "The Abyss" is intended primarily as an emotional human-drama, and two scenes, a desperate CPR revival and a heroic but doomed dive, work exceptionally well. Unfortunately, these scenes fail to save what amounts to a ridiculously long "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" retread, especially when this near three hour movie has such an anti-climactic ending. "The Abyss" is a decent movie but a disappointing James Cameron film.

*Note - don't bother with the special edition: it only serves to exacerbate things by adding even more length (!) and including one of the most cloyingly cliched and sophomoric anti-nuclear war subplots this reviewer has ever witnessed.