One of the only films to be thrilling, shocking, chilling, heartbreaking and hauntingly beautiful all at once... almost perfect

Rating: 10/10 (14 February 2012)

It's such a huge surprise that Katsuhiro Otomo managed to pack so much wonder, beauty and pure cinematic perfection into only two hours of film. Of course, with the equally extravagant source material, I would expect the adaptation to be horrifically cut and toned down, washing away all the excitement of the manga, and though a lot has changed, Otomo has certainly done very, very well.
The music is beyond brilliant; it gets you heart racing when it wants, it frightens you to death in the nightmare scenes, and it breaks your heart in the sad scenes. Throughout the film, I couldn't stand up, do anything else, or press the pause button. In fact, I stayed sat down, watching the end credit sequence. I was so impressed by its beauty, that I got that glorious feeling of crying, as you so do after such a brilliant film.
There are a few very mild criticisms though, as the film is not without very minor flaws. The more recent English dub by Pioneer Sound is certainly more impressive than the previous Streamline sound version, but the best way to watch it is definitely in the original Japanese with subtitles on. Even if you're one of those people who hates having subtitles on, no matter what, it's much better the way it was originally written. The American voices often sound very silly and they draw away from the wonder of the story. And also, they cut out some parts from the actual film, and edited the music (no creepy organs, or 80's style action riffs!) due to some reasons I've yet to understand.
Another small criticism I'd like to give is the story. Given the 2,000 A4-size page material that Otomo originally wrote and had to adapt into a 2 hour motion picture, he did a very, very good job at getting all of the most suited bits and making the necessary changes. But, if you're a casual film-goer, you may miss the points and end up lost. As for clever people, they will spot everything and realise all of the points, and the clever but complex story will affect them as it did with myself. The first time I saw it, I loved the spectacle but barely understood it, but the second time (after I'd read the books) I fell in love with the story too.
I'm not sure what else to say... great story, great plot, great characters and voice performance (in the Japanese version at least), and the animation is remarkable, even for today! At 26 frames-per-second and all of the complex action, it's certainly a wonder how they achieved nearly everything with hand-drawn, hand-painted cells. It's at the level that we can only achieve with CGI today... and this is only a few artists on paper in a studio, with few computers involved.
If you love anime, you HAVE to watch this film at some point. I wouldn't recommend this to anybody who won't pay attention to it, but any film- goers who love a great story along with superb spectacle, this film is totally worth it.
Overall: 10.0/10