Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

Alita: Battle Angel is a cyborg fight-fest with a wide-eyed teen super-heroine using her incredible physicality to beat the grease and guts out of a variety of brutal mechanized bad guys while trying to figure out who she really is and stop rampant evil! Fans of cyberpunk will not be disappointed, and anyone who's familiar with Science Fiction films will no doubt see something of Frankenstein, Blade Runner, The Running Man, Rollerball, Elysium, A.I., The Terminator and more here as they share some DNA (or is it nanotechnology?). Uncanny Valley or incredibly realised CGI is in the eye of the beholder-Nevertheless, this is a violent action-oriented identity-quest for Alita, and heaven help whoever gets in her path.

Erik M.

This movie looks just beautiful. On paper it is not exactly the most original take on the cyberpunk genre, but what we get here is crisp looking, fantastically detailed and with enough flair and ingenuity to genuinely give some sense of wonder. From a storyline perspective, it's sadly quite thin and commits the cardinal sin of not giving the story a truly satisfying conclusion. You'll be hard pressed to find a movie that rushes through the third act challenges more than this one does, giving the main character basically no challenge and one-shotting (one-slicing...) the 'final bosses', just to build up a sequel that is not likely to ever have. The main character is quite likeable and sympathetic (once you get over the freaky weirdness of her anime eyes...which happens quite flawlessly, another testament to the visual department), even if the script is cringey to the max in many instances (the heart scene, the xxvi century John Wick scene). Christoph Waltz is a fantastic father figure, but other than that the secondary characters are cardboard cutouts and quite poorly written, with dishonorable mention for the love interest, which though is probably just designed to be like that, some insipid adolescent love. I rank it 3 stars because it truly is one of the best looking sci-fi movies in recent years and it manages to bring sense of wonder that walks you through the formulaic but not unpleasant story and the movie is never boring, being a solid action flick. However, be very aware that you might feel cheated at the end.

Sammo ★