Redline (2009)

 

On the planet Dorothy, the Yellowline car race is nearing its conclusion.  Yellowline is the final elimination race for qualification into Redline, the most popular, most high octane, most dangerous race in the galaxy.

Only two of the racers in Yellowline will matter to us: idealistic young female driver "Cherry Boy Hunter" McLaren, who wins the race, and "Sweet" JP, who could have won but whose mob connections insisted he finish second.

But then the announcement comes that Redline will be held on Roboworld, a planet of militant cyborgs whose President has threatened to kill everyone involved with the Redline if they pollute his planet.  A couple of the participants drop out, rather than deal with this extra danger, and JP gets his chance to win the Biggest Race In The Galaxy after all.  Assuming that is, and he - and anyone else involved in the race, including "Cherry Boy Hunter" - lives to see the finish line.

This Japanese anime has frenetic and highly stylised animation.  It uses lots of very dark shadow splashed into high contrast with neon colours and blinding whites.  The character designs are also generally wild and visually arresting.  Ironically, the major exceptions to this are the main characters of JP and McLaren.  JP's design is pretty much just a 50s greaser with a massive pompadour, and McLaren's is a fairly generic anime tomboy.

The visuals also put a lot of emphasis on depicting the enormous speed of the race, and in delivering spectacle as a whole.  The film has won a lot of critical praise for this - and it does do it well.  Unfortunately, I think it does so at the cost of the plot and the characterisation.

Now you might be thinking "Plot?  It's a racing film.  Does it need a plot other than 'how will the main character win?'." And that's a fair point.  Ironically enough, though, it's Redline's failure to narrowly focus on that storyline that costs it in the plot stakes.  The script introduces a wide variety of sub-plots and side stories that take up a significant amount of screen time, and which don't deliver any real forward movement in the main plot or in the development of the major characters.  The resulting lack of character depth, in particular, is a real problem.  They're very basically sketched and have minimal motivation.  As far as I can tell, we're supposed to care about JP because (a) he's the main character and (b) he had a rough childhood, while McLaren's main personality traits are "idealistic and attractive".  Their under-developed personalities meant I did not much care about either them or the outcome of the race.

If you like high octane animated spectacle, Redline might well be for you.  But it didn't really rev my engine.