Not the movie everyone thinks it is

Rating: 10/10 (3 April 2000)

I've learned to love this film, but it shocks me that such a loyal cult following has sprung up around it. It's not an easy movie to watch-- the story meanders between many different interlocking plot threads (personally, I find the sections dealing with the underground resistance movement to be boring and needlessly complicated). At its core, though, it's a story about a biker, Tetsuo Shima, who suffers from an inferiority complex and lives in a self-imposed cloud of low self-esteem; when Tetsuo gains psychic powers after the government experiments on his brain, he uses his new-found abilities to take revenge against a world that rejected and scorned him as a child. "Akira" disguises itself as a big crazy science fiction movie, but it's really about the Columbine syndrome, how some misguided young people can only escape their self-imposed feelings of isolation through violence against the supposedly happier, more 'accepted' people they see and envy every day. A fascinating film that absolutely demands multiple viewings, and one of the most rewarding movies ever made (if you understand it).