Saturday 7 May 2011

If I was a film...I'd be REDLINE.

A neo kinetic frenzy of a film with slaughtering pace, gorgeous visual chaos and 10 pints of exhilaration for every viewer. Sometimes hard to follow but the energy and excitement it created merely served to stoke my fervour and make me want to watch it again and again and again.

I saw it at 5.30am during the super smashing Sci-Fi-London Film Festival Anime All Nighter and there was no better time to be ripped from tiredness into an optical onslaught with the greatest colour palette I've ever seen in a movie or anywhere. A breath of fresh air, a whirlwind to cleanse your mind more like.

In development for over half a decade, it's the directorial debut feature of Takeshi Koike (key animator on The Animatrix, Dead Leaves and Samurai Champloo). Somehow, without the audience realising it, Koike manages to make all this chaos believable. Perhaps through the pure density of detail or just knowing when to pull in the reigns slightly, he makes everything from the busy alien crowd scenes to the explosive race sequences seem like events in a real, tangible world.

Everyone will not love this film – from the high-octane, scratch-mixed techno Soundtrack by James Shimoji or the haters who'll spit their narrative dummy at the film's minimal plot. Redline is experimental, challenging and most importantly exhilarating in its artistic style in ways that most works could not even dream of reaching through script writing or thematic devices.

The beast is released on 12th September 2011 on blu-ray and DVD (Mr Cyan cannot wait), but in the meantime, have a Pat Butcher's at the trailer.

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