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Indie flix
By Times staff
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 18, 2002
Visit to the future crafted with time-honored techniques
Metropolis (PG-13) (107 min.) -- Taro Rin's Metropolis makes one understand why fans of Japanese animation (or anime) are so feverishly supportive of the genre, making it this country's most popular foreign cinema import. This is a gorgeous piece of work, with futuristic settings and special effects that live-action technicians only dream of creating. Plus, it features characters and a plot just taxing enough to seem pleasantly complex without suffering from tech-geek syndrome.
Like Fritz Lang's 1927 live-action film of the same name, Metropolis occurs in dazzling neo-architecture, revealing a world where progress has gone too far. The two films part ways at that point, with Rin's movie -- based on Osamu Tezuka's comic book -- focused on an industrialist's scheme to rule the world. Robots have taken over jobs, leading to revolts by unemployed rebels. Even the tycoon has a teenage hit man stalking cyberworkers, while he secretly finances the creation of a supercyborg named Tima, the last piece of a clockwork doomsday machine.
Tima, however, believes she's also human, especially after befriending a boy named Kenichi, who joins his uncle in Metropolis for an investigation. The city is celebrating the creation of a ziggurat, like the biblical Tower of Babel, that has a secret purpose. Metropolis gradually reveals the ziggurat's mystery, a violent workers' rebellion, family tensions and a sweet relationship between man and machine in an era that won't allow it.
Rin's crew of artists used old-fashioned, hand-drawn animation techniques and, judging from the hallucinatory action and atmosphere, that's a monumental task. But the film looks better than easier, computer-generated concoctions, possibly because of the human touch offered by diligent artists instead of keyboard jockeys. Metropolis has its own battle between man and machine going on, and man wins this round by a visual knockout.
One objection I've previously noted about anime films is still evident in Metropolis. Background exposition comes in clumps of verbiage, as if the filmmakers got carried away with grandeur and have to catch up on exposition. The dialogue often plays like captions for the pretty pictures.
It should be noted that Metropolis was previewed on DVD for this review, allowing a dubbed English version. The print shown at Tampa Theatre will employ English subtitles for Japanese dialogue. Metropolis will be available in VHS and DVD formats on Tuesday, making its Tampa Theatre appearance seem suspect. However, this is a film that should benefit from large-screen projection and a multichannel stereo system. A
-- STEVE PERSALL, Times film critic
* * *
Scotland, Pa. (R) (97 minutes). Christopher Walken, as a quirky Columbolike police detective determined to solve a murder and sure to annoy folks along the way, is worth the price of admission to Scotland, Pa., a decidedly uneven comic drama from first-time filmmaker Billy Morrissette. It's another entry in the latest string of Shakespeare updates for the big screen.
James LeGros and Maura Tierney star as young lovers, both employed in dead-end work at a hamburger joint in a downbeat town in backwoods Pennsylvania, during the early '70s. Joe "Mac" McBeth (LeGros, shaggy and a bit dim) is not quite content working behind the counter, giving away all his great ideas about the fast-food business, including a drive-through and a combo special (think the golden arches). His wife Pat (Tierney, sexy and witchy) is even more ambitious.
The upshot is a plot to remove their ungrateful boss (James Rebhorn) from his job; the hit isn't carried out quite the way they had planned. The McBeths indeed gain local fame and a measure of fortune after they take over the restaurant. But they suffer terrible pangs of conscience as a result of their misdeed. Andy Dick, Amy Smart and Timothy "Speed" Levitch pop up every now and again as a trio of silly cosmic advisers hanging out at a carnival midway; they may or may not be figments of Mac's imagination. B
-- PHILIP BOOTH, Times staff writer
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