Review of Redline

I went into Redline hearing good things about it's artwork, and not knowing much else about it, or what to expect. What I ended up watching is perhaps a bit disappointing, despite really loving parts of the film. Let's find out why. Redline has some really beautiful art, and it's definitely a landmark film in this respect. Showing what can be achieved with modern animation. Every frame is just dripping with tons of atmosphere, gorgeous scenery, and mouth-watering colors. The art style is great as well, with character designs that are fun and eye-popping. Things move fluidly and there's a lot of flashy moments which fitthe overall tone of the film. It's an absolute pleasure to look at, and it's no surprise as the film had been in production for a full seven years prior to it's release.

However, despite the gorgeous art, the story fails to impress. It's a very simple plot, which could have worked well, but in this case it just manages to end up feeling uninspired. Things tend to just happen, and there's a basic story to follow, it even gets fun during certain scenes, but there's no real reason for any of the events on screen. One scene happens, another scene happens, and things keep slowly moving along, but it's almost as though there's no real point to anything. Things just happen seemingly for the sake of having interesting moments with the animation, but even during the exciting action-packed moments, there's just not enough tension for the viewer. I found it very easy to not care about any of the events throughout, making me hope it was almost over by the end.

Part of this probably also has to do with the weak cast of characters. Despite having well done character designs, visually... they end up feeling dull, tired, and overdone. I'm sure many of us have seen these kind of characters before, and despite them being somewhat flashy, the writers didn't add anything new to them. They're all very one-dimensional, with only a single goal and motivation throughout the film. The interactions they have with each other feel contrived and pointless. None of them were very realistic or relatable, and they all ended up feeling very forgettable.

The soundtrack is much in the same vein. Utterly forgettable. It's filled with a ton of generic sounding techno tracks which get in the way more than anything else. Even when the techno isn't hitting quite as hard, the soundtrack turns into upbeat trance, and it's still not very enjoyable, and definitely very generic. If you're able to ignore the soundtrack, though... the film sounds really nice. Sound effects are large and booming, and really fit the style of the film. The voice actors also did a great job portraying their characters. I watched the Japanese version, and they managed to deliver natural sounding performances, despite the poor writing. The audio is really a mixed bag, but I feel like I ended up liking more parts of it, compared to the few parts I disliked.

Overall, Redline is a beautiful, wonderful, gorgeous, but ultimately flawed film. The things it does right in terms of animation and presentation it does INCREDIBLY well, but in doing so, it sacrifices two of the most important things in any work of fiction... the storyline and it's characters. If you don't really care about the story and you're only interested in watching something to have a fun, wild ride, Redline succeeds somewhat, but be warned that it still gets bogged down by it's occasional slow pace. If you're only interested in the animation, Redline is a visual feast, and is easy to recommend in that regard. However, I still don't think that alone can prop up an otherwise imperfect movie.