[Golgo 13: The Professional] - (Dub)
Year of Production: 1983
Director: Osamu Dezaki
Studio: TMS
This is my second time watching this in a few months and I must admit that I enjoyed this far more on my second time through. I'm not entirely shy what's the case, either, because the only thing different about this viewing experience was that I listened to the dub which was neither exceptional nor unexceptional. Perhaps I simply knew what to expect, specifically I was simply aware that the movie had some pacing issues and that it would eventually pick up steam.
I must confess, when I listened to the DITB episode about
Golgo 13 I was surprisingly shocked to hear everyone raving about how much they enjoyed this movie when they saw it was a teenager. I, on the other hand, never saw this movie when I was younger and so I can examine it without nostalgia clouding my vision. Looking at the film with unbiased eyes reveals a number of obvious flaws: the film is clearly composed of a number of Golgo 13 short stories stitched together into a movie which results in some unfortunate pacing issues, the directing can be far too experimental and surreal for it's own good, a number of the action sequences look cool but are fairly unsatisfying, women are treated horrendously (which is true to the source material, I imagine, but still) and CG helicopters ruin everything.
Still, despite all these shortcomings the movie looks and feels utterly amazing. Osamu Dezaki was a truly stylish director. He's extremely talented at making beautiful images. He's also exceptionally creative as well, it's really hard to spot a scene where he sits on his haunches and re-uses shots and visual motifs that he's used earlier, instead he always strives to shoot from a different angle or use a different technique to come up with something new. His quest to create bold, striking images is not entirely unproblematic though as some of the stuff he produces is simply surreal rather than effective, and he ends up sacrificing animation for detail although in this case I don't particularly care about that because the detail in the film is astounding. I would dearly love to have the BD because every image in this film is packed with agonising amounts of detail and and craft and shading.
While the visual direction might not be as cohesive as in say, a Miyazaki or Kon or Hosoda movie, Dezaki really brings something else to the table in terms of his visuals. Feast your eyes on this:
