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Innovative 'Steamboy' can't power past holes in plot
Director Katsuhiro Otomo's "Steamboy"
Triumph Films
Director: Katsuhiro Otomo.
Stars: Voices of Anna Paquin, Patrick Stewart.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for action violence.
Michael Machosky can be reached via e-mail or at 412-320-7901.
But there's something "Gangs of New York" or even "The Phantom Menace" about it, too -- the distinctive fingerprints of a visionary creator completely sucked in by his own story, unable to maintain the perspective necessary to see it from the audience's point of view.
Director Katsuhiro Otomo is one of the godfathers of the "anime" boom. His "Akira" was the perfect convergence of sci-fi, mysticism, future-shock style and pre-millenial, apocalyptic fear. "Steamboy" is his next major statement -- eight years in the making, at a cost of $20 million, the most expensive Japanese animated film ever.
It's been voice-acted in English by top-drawer talent such as Alfred Molina and Patrick Stewart, so there are no subtitles or mangled dubbing.
What makes "Steamboy" intriguing is the setting. Instead of the futuristic neo-Tokyo that Otomo made famous, it's 19th-century Manchester and London, where the early seeds of science fiction were sprouting in the smoky clamor of the Industrial Revolution. It's an imaginary Victorian England where science outstrips even the wildest fantasies of Jules Verne -- a shuddering, clanking world of levers, dials, gunpowder, clockwork gears and steam.
The Steams are a family of inventors -- the father and grandfather are in Alaska working on secret projects, while young Ray tinkers in a large country house on the outskirts of Manchester.
Suddenly, Ray's life is pulled inside out when his distraught grandfather shows up, bearing something called a "steam ball." Then a squad of Steam Age stormtroopers bursts into the parlor, and Ray escapes with the steam ball, pursued by a massive steam-powered tank and a monstrous, clawed zeppelin.
Ray is captured by the O'Hara Foundation and meets its prime movers -- an obnoxious little rich girl named Scarlett, and Ray's own father, a cold and distant man with megalomaniacal intentions.
The "steam ball" is needed to power the Steam Castle, O'Hara's London headquarters.
On one side, there's Ray's WMD-building, ultra-capitalist father, who believes in science's ability to forcibly uplift humanity from its conflicts and squalor. On the other side, there's Ray's gaunt, bedraggled grandfather, fearful of corporate greed and lust for power.
Conflict arises after a surprise live-fire arms demonstration and a remarkable battle takes place.
Steam-powered hang-gliders strafe and bomb, steam-submarines blockade, steam-tanks trundle forward.
It's a vividly rendered world, with all the mists and dust and grit that lesser cartoons leave out -- which makes the ludicrous science go down much easier. But all semblance of story goes out the window for the final, apocalyptic 30-minutes-plus battle.
And all the piston-powered, retro-future war engines in the world can't fully iron out some gaping gashes in the plot. Nor can they fully redeem the slight characterizations and dim motivations of everyone but the fearful, heroic Ray, cast adrift in a world where all the grownups seem to have gone mad.
