Summary

“The popular anime series from which Cowboy Bebop: The Movie sprang is a thoroughly modern and aggressively cool collision of film noir, cyberpunk, and about half a million other influences (Bob Dylan, Don Siegel, etc). The big-screen version offers more of the same plus a new dizzying attention to detail, and a whole lot of prescient millennial dread. The year is 2071 and Mars looks like a combination of Casablanca and upper Manhattan. Quite naturally, some bearded lunatic wants to destroy it with rush-hour car bombings and elaborate bioterror plots (that the film was originally released in Japan in September 2001 is an eerie coincidence). A gargantuan bounty reward on the culprit attracts lanky, semi-heroic cash-seeker Spike Spiegel and his motley crew of ‘Cowboys,’ who move in on the lone terrorist only to find a labyrinth of government conspiracies and military experiments…” Patrick Macias, San Francisco Bay Guardian

Screening from 35mm film print. Print from Amalgamated Movies, rights from Sony Pictures.