Cowboy Bebop: The Movie 2001

[8.6/10] I never really cared for Spike. That’s not entirely Cowboy Bebop’s fault. I came to the series late. And if you grew up when I did, by the time you’ve reached the modern day, the “Whatever man” antihero archetype had already been done to death. So approaching Spike in particular outside of his time and place makes a player who was more novel in his moment seem like a walking tired trope.

But he isn’t. He’s more than that.Cowboy Bebop: The Movie confirms that, and finds a creative way to do it. And the film’s creative choices not only illuminates Spike as a character, it helps the whole of Cowboy Bebop snap into place for skeptics and detractors like me.

The answer is to play the contrast and compare game between Spike and Vincent, the movie’s antagonist. On the surface, Vincent is a lot like Spike. He has a casual attitude despite the explosive events that take place around him. He is effortlessly suave, with a “cool guys don’t look at explosions” air about him. He is practically unstoppable in battle, with aim, balance, and a certain grace that, taken together, make him hard for even the best-trained opponents to top him. He is sanguine about death, seemingly operating without fear. He’s been experimented on, surviving a wash of harsh experiences and come out of it ready to follow his own star. He even has that same manicured scruffiness.

Most notably, he speaks, as Spike did in Cowboy Bebop’s finale, about life and this world as possibly no more a dream. It’s easy not to care when you’re not sure anything you’re doing is real. When you do, everything comes with a certain detachment, a certain remove, that makes it easier not to care about the consequences of your actions, and take risks that others would rightfully balk at.

All of that could plausibly describe Spike during his televised adventures. So when Vincent does unspeakable things -- killing innocent bystanders, violating Faye, taking steps to kill millions -- the movie implicitly asks a simple but potentially damning question. Is Spike Spiegel more than this? Is this his destiny? His damnation in the shadow of the devil? In that, the conflict with Spike’s grim doppelganger acts as a referendum on the character.

But even if you don’t want to delve into the explosive yet introspective examination of the series’ protagonist, Cowboy Bebop the movie is a captivating, rollicking good time.

The structure of the film is, frankly, better than in most of the T.V. show. After a brief reintroduction for the quartet that drives the series, the film sets up a catastrophe and a mystery. Some cloak-and-dagger operator let loose an explosion in the center of a major city, and the apparent chemical warfare, an agent with debilitating biological effects, washed over everyone in the vicinity. The consequences are devastating, but the mastermind, and the nature of his weapon remain unknown. With a sky-high bounty out, it’s up to the Bebop crew to uncover the answers to the who, the how, and the why of such a monumental crime.

In that, The Movie spins arguably Cowboy Bebop’s best mystery yet. The prospect of such a substantial bounty, and such a byzantine set of clues, gives each of the main four something meaningful to do. Faye demonstrates her unwitting way with people, as she gets a bead on the culprit’s hacker accomplice. As usual, Jet plies his old connections on the force, piecing together a chemical company that has some hand in the catastrophe but is trying to cover it up. Spike uses his instinctual method to drum up hints as to the source of the ruckus to find a colorful if cryptic guide who surreptitiously gifts him a sample of the weapon used. Ed hacks her way through various systems to trace the roots of the company and get a list of suspects. And even Ein plays a part in IDing the culprit.

The writing is sharp. Not only does the big whodunnit here provide fodder for every member of the Bebop crew, showing what each of them brings to the table, but the divided nature of their “investigation” allows the creative team to dole out breadcrumbs for the audience at a perfect pace. It’s just enough to both satisfy your curiosity in the moment while also tantalizing you with what you don’t already know. That’s a tough balance to strike, but one that makes for an engrossing mystery when done right like this.

It doesn’t hurt that The Movie has style out the wazoo. Part of what makes VIncent compelling as a bad guy isn’t just his backstory or his persona; it’s the vibe he exudes with his all black attire and elegant violence punctuated with philosophy. The Wachowskis have cited Cowboy Bebop as part of their inspiration for The Matrix, and nowhere does that influence stand out more than here.

Better than that, The Movie has one of the best senses of place of any film. The big city where the action happens goes unnamed. Certain street signs suggest Berlin. The closing set piece on the “bridge between Earth and Heaven” evokes Paris’ Eiffel Tower. Like much of Cowboy Bebop’s setting, it’s likely a milieu, without any individual analogue.

And yet, this may be the most viscerally felt rendition of New York City on the silver screen. It’s a hard thing to articulate, but somehow director Shinichirō Watanabe and company capture the peculiar energy of the City that Never Sleeps, the smashed-together mix of neighborhoods and cultures and spirits that defines the place. From the gasp-worthy interconnected tumult of the Middle Eastern district “Rashid” leads spike through, replete with a bustling bazaar and an invitingly cluttered clock shop, to the busy streets and public square where folks of all stripes make their way. The truest achievement of the film’s art on this front is the fact that, almost from the jump, you feel like you’re there.

Of course, even when the Cowboy Bebop T.V. show flagged, its imagery and animation in combative moments was unimpeachable. The same is true for the series’ jump to the big screen, only moreso. A convenient store stand off with a trio-turned-quarter of robbers shows off the seemingly lackadaisical but impossible precision of Spike in a crisis. His hallroom fight with Elektra, an agent of the malevolent chemical company, grabs the eye with its fluid, close quarters combat. The three-way pursuit and stand-off among Vincent, Spike, and Elektra on board the city’s monorail has all the intensity and dramatic visuals one could ask for. A trademark chase and dogfight through the skies above the metropolis comes with a hummingbird-like sense of motion. And the final battle atop the ersatz Eiffel Tower is as epic and kinetic as any the series has produced.

Even in quieter moments, the film is a treat for the eyes. Simple framings of Spike and Elektra, back to back in adjoining prison cells, conveys the sense of connection between the two strangers. The use of light and shadow makes even run-of-the-mill scenes seem more emotive and alive. In short, you could watch this movie without any sound and still be wowed by what’s on offer.

If you did, though, you’d be missing out on the critical ideas going on under the hood. As was often the case on the show, there’s a theme of skepticism about the institutions and powers that be beyond the hardscrabble, “penny-ante” life of our heroes.

The Chemical Company engaging in this wide-ranging cover-up has no sense of humanity, being willing to dispose of its flies-in-the-ointment no matter what the human cost of its action and inaction. The police are incompetent bunglers, missing the real danger in the throes of trying to get ahead, in the same way that drove Jet to quit. The military are some mixture of counterproductive and cruel, standing in Spike’s way when he aims to settle this threat once and for all, and in the rigors of war, churning out victims like Vincent, who become traumatized and lost in a useless battle. The anti-authority bent of the series has always been apparent, but it’s particularly evident here.

The film is not preachy though. Instead, the best word for it is “soulful”. There is plenty of engrossing plot for folks whose movie-going enjoyment rests on “What happens next?” There’s heaps of riveting visuals to keep you on the edge of your seat. But true to Cowboy Bebop’s television run, there are also reams of moments where various characters ask one another what it all means, dredge up their own traumas, and reach their own answers.

It’s the mood that pervades Cowboy Bebop: The Movie in moments both loud and quiet. The good guys and the bad guy are all trying to figure this thing out, in some way, to resolve how to live in a world whose machinations seem to chew up people like them and spit them back out. Reflecting on loss, on the choices that brought them here, on the regrets and hopes that brace them and keep them going, make the film affecting, not just exciting. There is an extra layer of meaning, of personal reckoning, beyond the explosions and the artistry.

Nowhere does that land with more force than in Spike’s orbit of Vincent. Despite his cravenness in action, Vincent is sympathetic. While parts of Cowboy Bebop don’t have the same impact after years of successors playing in the same space, in the wake of American soldiers coming back from war with PTSD and toxic exposure in the decades since the show aired, if anything, the story of Vincent’s string of tragedies that made him into this fractured being without limits hits harder now than it did then.

He is, in many ways,a grave warning for Spike. This is what you could become if you succumb to the same forces as Vincent has. The two men share a lot in common. So it's not hard to imagine that, for want of a nail, it could be Spike callously disregarding the lives of his allies and random bystanders alike. It could be Spike willing to unleash a nano machine-based biological agent in the hopes of feeling something. It could be Spike who writes off the existence and suffering of anyone else because of his own existential baggage.

Only, it’s not the case. There is something deeper in Spike, despite his unflappable uninterested facade, that bears a real connection to the world and to the people in his life, that distinguishes him from Vincent. Again and again, we see Vincent’s casual cruelty toward others, from random cops who stop his car to accomplices who’ve outlasted their usefulness.

Spike, on the other hand, makes a big show of not caring whether a robber kills an old lady, but it’s clear from context that he’s only using it as a distraction to get the bad guy where he wants him. Likewise, he pretends not to give a damn if vincent unleashes his jack-o-lantern bomb, because it gives him an edge in the final confrontation, but he’s already gone to great lengths to unleash the vaccine and antidote on the population sos that Vincent’s agent won’t work.

Vincent is possessive, creepy, and violative of Ffaye when he has her in his crutches.s But whatever their friction, Spike respects Faye, telling her that he’s depending on her and trusting her with a big part of his plan to save the day.

That’s the big epiphany here. Spike wants to save the day. He pretends not to. He pretends it doesn’t matter to him. His entire persona is built around being a bounty hunter who’s only in it for the reward. But time and again, we’ve seen his actions contract that mask he puts on, showing someone who risks his safety and well-being for just causes, and who goes above and beyond the call when, as Jet highlights, he’d have every reason to cut bait when things start to get hairy.

Because whatever his protestation, Spike is bound to this world and the people within it. In his dying moments, Vincent waxes rhapsodic about the same idea, with the poetic prose the series is known for. When he sees Elektra clearly again, he’s reminded that whatever his struggles, she’s real, something to anchor him in this world again. And it makes him regret the brutal path that led to this shameful end.

As Spike admits to Elektra, Julia brought him back into this world in much the same way. (Crazy theory, is she the woman in the purple hijab, keeping tabs on Spike?) She is the nail Vincent was for want of. But so are Jet, Faye, and Edward. There are people worth protecting for Spike, people whose lives and existences make the rest of the world worth saving and protecting, even at great risk and great personal cost.

That’s the rub. That’s the thing that makes me like Spike after twenty-six episodes of being on the fence. He pretends not to give a damn. He pretends to be mostly annoyed by his comrades on the Bebop. He pretends to write off the worth of the lives of anyone who can’t put a few woolongs in his pocket. But whether or not he can hold those butterflies in his hand, someone brought Spike out of that dream a long time ago. Whether or not he’ll ever admit. Whether or not he’ll ever shed his practiced cool and tell his true colors as much as he shows them. Spike isn’t Vincent. Because he may go to great lengths to pretend otherwise, but when the world and his friends are on the line, Spike can’t help but care.