Steamboy

Steamboy
Originally uploaded by Struthers.

A large part of the West's fascination with Asian cinema has been its distinct storytelling and visual style. Steamboy disappointingly has neither.
As the title suggests, Steamboy is a film about steam and a boy. Set in the 19th century, the awesome power that is about to be unleashed through steam and the use of brilliant yet disturbed scientific minds, is an allegory for the nuclear arms race.
The story involves a young boy, Ray, who has been entrusted by his grandfather with a steam-powered invention that he can't let fall into the wrong hands. Everyone is after him, and he can trust anyone, perhaps even his own father.
It was a curious decision of the distributors to screen an animated feature, where the action takes place in England with a cast of Caucasian characters, amidst the industrial revolution, with a Japanese language sound track and English subtitles.
As we have come to expect from Japanese animation houses, Steamboy is visually spectacular and intricate detail, but at over two hours in duration it falls noticeably short on substance.
While Steamboy is obviously a Japanese production which was made for a Japanese audience, it is quite annoying to see English characters completely devoid of any Englishness, which equates to fertile comedic ground that is completely ignored.
There are a few tense moments early on in the piece, but things become more and more ridiculous as Otomo, (Japanime classic Akira) tries to continually up the pace by throwing bigger and louder explosions, as the if he'd spent the last few years at the Michael Bay 'more is more' school of action cinema.
It is curious to see a film which has been made with such painstaking care and attention to detail whilst resting its laurels on a wafer thin plot.
The characters are supposedly driven by their intense relationships, none of which are given time to establish and are therefore unbelievable.
Good and evil ambiguity, and loyalty are themes littered throughout Asian cinema, yet in Steamboy they are, for lack of a better word; cartoonish.
The one redeeming feature of Steamboy is the interesting subplot that less than subtly criticizes the American military industrial machine.
Steamboy is a visual feast, and rates 2 stars.