'Bebop' movie true to spirit of TV cartoon

By Wayne Harada
Advertiser Entertainment Writer

'Cowboy Bebop: The Movie' R , for violence, adult situations 115 minutes

Pretty cool, this.

A bioterrorist attack threatening an outpost city on Mars (which looks eerily like New York, Paris or London at their darkest), circa 2071, beckons the Bebop brigade, which includes Spike Spiegel, the leading bounty hunter; Jet Black, his crusading partner; Faye Valentine, the leading bounty lady; and Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV, the kid-genius hacker whose name sounds like a he but is actually a she.

Voiced respectively by Steven Jay Blum, Beau Billingslea, Wendee Lee and Mellisa Fahn, these four scour the city in search of trouble and the opportunity to meddle and help. Every world in need deserves a good-deed bunch.

It helps, of course, to know a little about the TV series and its denizens to get a quick handle on the schematics. But even without a previous peek, "Bebop" has enough action, bad guys, gunplay, fast-and-furious chases and martial arts to pique the interest.

A hood has exploded a tanker in the middle of the city, releasing a killer contaminant that has taken 500 lives. The Beboppers have to track the culprit and identify the venom to prevent further havoc, and it is in this vein that the film — though animated — resembles your typical adventure, whether of James Bondian or "24" influence, with typical government bureaucracy, suspects and military might, converging in a volley of impressions that look suspiciously familiar.

With a reward of 300,000,000 woolongs (hey, this is a make-believe world), the bounty hunters are eager to put the trash in the can and collect. Of course, there is Vincent (Daran Norris) the troublemaker, and a love from the past, Elektra (Jennifer Hale), to keep Spike on the go.

And there's a nano-machine virus out to devour the world (not unlike the menace in the current kiddie version of 007, "Agent Cody Banks") that must be kept in check, too.

Though mostly in color, there are sequences in black and white — including an homage to "High Noon," complete with that climactic draw of the guns — that test your patience and tap your movie IQ.

One irritant: this dubbed-in-English version requires deep concentration to catch dialogue.