Vexille

I really liked the story in this film. Easily one of the best anime stories I've seen. I'd say it's like "Ghost in the Shell" meets "Resident Evil". This film is an Action, Sci-Fi with a bit of a drama, horror undertone. The visuals are amazing. It has strong CG look but the textures almost looked hand colored. It has a real unique look to it. I can't explain. The score seemed a bit thrown together. The songs didn't seem to fit into what was happening on screen. Paul Oakenfold did a pretty poor job with the score if you ask me. The sound effects were well done and the voice acting was good. This film is worth seeing for it's great story and rich animation.

Okay, so if you've read all of the other reviews then you know that the animation of this film is AWESOME! It's an excellent step forward for hybrid animation. Also, though not all of the reviewers agree, my opinion of the action in this film was that it was sweet and sick (in the most radical fashion.) For the animation and action alone, this film is totally worth the price of a rental. Which brings us to the plot of the film; while some reviewers thought the plot was empty or lacked merit, I am of the opinion that those reviewers probably didn't pay attention to all of the dialog. The plot was well developed, more believable than several of the big-budget live-action Hollywood films (such as The Happening, which totally sucked,) and played along the social issue of fear of technological invasiveness quite nicely, though it was a rather formulaic script. The dialog was a little weak, and there wasn't much for serious character development, but the nonverbal scripting played quite well. After all, this was an animated action flick, and quite frankly it was one of the better offerings from the anime genre in recent years. To recap, this is worth the cost of the rental if only for the visual imagery. However, if you have a well developed sensibility for the suspension of disbelief, then you will also likely enjoy the story as a whole. I know that I certainly did.

The plot: After Japan withdraws from the United Nations and expels all foreigners, the West becomes increasingly suspicious that Japan is conducting illegal research on robotics and transhumanism.

Vexille is a generic cyberpunk story about of the evils of transhumanism, megacorporations, isolationism, and imperialism. The art is beautiful, but it seems wasted on such a derivative and clichéd plot. The story had some real potential, but they decided to dumb everything down, remove all subtlety, and turn the antagonist into a James Bond villain. This is the kind of movie that has themes that a 15 year old would find incredibly deep and philosophical, mixing in generic cyberpunk themes with Romanticism and technophobia. Very little of the movie was actually engaging. Both the characters and the action sequences were flat and mostly interchangeable.

Maybe this movie had a point when it railed against the lack of soul in technological advancement: the CGI art was beautiful but entirely soulless.

Saw this as world premiere at Locarno festival. In 2K DLP projection on 27m wide screen. Looked very good apart from some aliasing at times. The film borrows visually from "Dune" (sandworms) and some others but it's quite interesting with its mix of not photo realistic and more realistic CGI elements. Will look great on Blue Ray HD disc. The story is about a Japan of the future which has shielded itself from all foreign surveillance for 10 years so nobody knows what is going on. There are suspicions of illegal production of androids by a mega corporation with unclear goals, potentially dangerous to the human race on a global scale.

It's 2067 and Japan has become a nation completely cut off from the rest of the world because it refuses to adhere to a U.N. mandate banning the development and manufacturing of human-like androids. The nation has also set up a sophisticated magnetic force field that effectively bars all outsiders from entering its borders. S.W.O.R.D. is a secret U.S. special forces team sent in to find out what diabolical activities are occurring on the inside. The main character, Vexille, is a feisty female member of this special ops force.

"Vexille" is a stylish and energetic dystopian fantasy, marked by imaginative storytelling, exciting action sequences, and animation that is a canny mixture of art deco, Soviet-era agitprop - with its heavy emphasis on facial shadowing - and technology-based futurism. Nicely done.