Patlabor 2's material is complex and very promising, but when all is said and done, a hell of a lot more was said than done. After watching this and getting all the numerous relationships right, I still felt noteably unsatisfied.
Patlabor 2 is a very stylishly directed story of Japan in the near future, being held hostage by a terrorist who masterminds a breakdown of civil rule in retribution for the government's incompetence. At the beginning of the movie, his machinations are set in motion, and at the end, there is the lacklustre uninspired payoff. Inbetween lies the sprinkling of philosophical monologues of sporadic merit, all the while the plot somehow unfolds.
I say "somehow" because I really don't know how. I guess I'll have to take the characters' words for it because, for the better part of the picture, their blatant expositions are the only way the audience finds out that something really big supposedly just happened -- talk about phoned in. For all it's stylish direction and philosophising characters, Patlabor 2 leaves the viewer with very little to digest about it's characters and universe, and as such does equally little to justify being a motion picture.
2/4
Patlabor 2 is a very stylishly directed story of Japan in the near future, being held hostage by a terrorist who masterminds a breakdown of civil rule in retribution for the government's incompetence. At the beginning of the movie, his machinations are set in motion, and at the end, there is the lacklustre uninspired payoff. Inbetween lies the sprinkling of philosophical monologues of sporadic merit, all the while the plot somehow unfolds.
I say "somehow" because I really don't know how. I guess I'll have to take the characters' words for it because, for the better part of the picture, their blatant expositions are the only way the audience finds out that something really big supposedly just happened -- talk about phoned in. For all it's stylish direction and philosophising characters, Patlabor 2 leaves the viewer with very little to digest about it's characters and universe, and as such does equally little to justify being a motion picture.
2/4