This was a movie that was supposed to play in December 2018, but from what I understood from internet, it was rescheduled to February 2019 due to too many major movies playing in that particular month. I thought it was an awesome decision as we should be able to see this without the distraction of other movies. However, as it premiered on the Chinese New Year holiday in Indonesia and I felt that we were already late anyway, we decided to see this only yesterday by utilizing cinema vouchers we got from CGV. OK, let's start with the movie now.
Brief Story Line
Set in the 26th century, after a major war called "The Fall" that destroyed most of cities in the world, a cyborg specialist named Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz - Downsizing, Inglourious Basterds etc) found the remains of a female cyborg and decided to bring it back to life. He gave her a robotic body and named her Alita (Rosa Salazar - CHiPs movie, Bird Box etc). Alita who had memory loss, later befriended with Hugo (Keean Johnson - Guidance TV series etc), a teenaged boy who also taught her a dangerous sport called Motorball. As Alita starting to remember her own history, she slowly realize that she was not meant to be just a normal girl that Dr. Ido wished her. Especially when she was unintentionally involved with some Hunter-warriors whose jobs were collecting bounties on cyborgs, including the dangerous Zapata (Ed Skrein - The Transporter Refueled, Deadpool etc).
Meanwhile a shady businessman Vector (Mahershala Ali - Green Book, Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse etc) together with doctor Chiren (Jennifer Connelly - Hulk, The Day the Earth Stood Still etc) were having their own agenda which had something to do with the Motorball sports. Alita would soon cross-path with them and with a deadly cyborg assassin Grewishka (Jackie Earle Haley - Watchmen, Little Children etc) who wanted to kill her.
So what would happen to Alita? What was her real background? Find them all in this amazingly done cyberpunk action movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Well this movie was really amazing in term of the action sequence. The fights scenes were all greatly crafted with Alita's movement really smooth and some showing the elasticity of Alita's body. I told my wife that the fights were like the ones we would see in an anime or in manga, except in live version. Aside from those fantastic fights, this film was also incredible in its special effects. There were so many of them that were beautifully done. Like the big eyes of Alita which at first I thought would be too obvious or scary but turned out they were very natural like they were really her eyes. And since this was a manga adaptation where the eyes of the characters were exceptionally large, watching this movie certainly added the sense of watching anime.
Another special effects that stood out were the views of the ruined buildings & the city that was brought to life with very smooth drawings around the edges. Unlike some other movies where we could see the cities obviously computerized, this one was a lot better. The cyborg effects were also remarkable. They were all really life like and you could almost feel that their body parts were their real bodies and not just some CGI. I really enjoyed all the special effects in this movie which I thought was one of the best.
Aside from the spectacular special effects and magnificent fights, the story itself was quite interesting. The story telling was taking its own time and not felt rushed, but it might not be fast enough for action/rush seeker who wanted a full action movie. There was an element of romance and a bit of simple twists which should be easily enough to guess like both my wife and I did. But I think the way the film was made was to slowly show us the transformation of Alita from the supposedly innocent cyborg to a dark-ish heroine. And Rosa Salazar was also amazing portraying this character.
The characters in here were not the white/black type but some of them were grey with Keean Johnson as Hugo and Ed Skrein as Zapata left a good impression to me personally. I also thought that the great vision of the director Robert Rodriguez (well known for some stylish & violent action movies such as Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, Sin City & its sequel or the more family friendly like all Spy Kids movies) was a great contributor in making this visually stunning movie.
To my surprise, this movie also had some emotional moment which quite affected my wife. As I said above that the film also had minor twists, but there was one thing that I did not see coming towards the end which my wife was already suspected. This was probably something that audience may or may not be satisfied. I just hoped that the producers "gamble" really paid off, otherwise it would be really irritating. Oh the film also had some nice background music. The sound effects were pretty good considering we saw this one in a studio which focused more towards the comfort as they were all reclining seats with small capacity of less than 80, giving us the more private sense (it was the Satin studio in CGV Central Park).
Overall, it was a great experience to see this movie as it had fantastic special effects and great fight sequence (not those bloody violent ones). Its story was not really complicated and quite easily understood. It had a duration of 122 minutes which included the credit scenes that did not have any mid or post scenes. Those interested in cyberpunk type of movie with great visual effects and wonderful fights would surely be satisfied with this.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
PS: This movie was based on manga series titled Gunnm aka Battle Angel Alita written by Yukito Kishiro which was published in 1990 having 9 volumes. It was already adapted into 2 anime movies and also video game. This film itself was adapted from the first 4 volumes.
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