Animation for the most epic In general, I looked at 'Mazafactora'.
Once upon a time I saw the trailer of this cartoon and realized: this is what I need. As a lover of good and interesting animation, I could not pass by a French-Japanese film, mostly consisting of unbridled action and extravagant style of animators from the well-known Studio 4°C. The latter generally have long established themselves among the audience with their experimental and festival animation, remembered by such films as ' Memories of the Future', ' Animatrix', ' Iron Concrete', ' Detroit Metal City' and, admittedly, still good full-length film adaptations ' Berserk', especially against the background of a recent series based on his motives. A very high-quality animation from Japanese masters with a relaxed-cool absurd story from a French comic artist? You have to look, I thought.
The plot in the film is not as complicated as it may seem somewhere in the middle. It includes a natural riddle and clarification, without leaving questions unanswered at the end. You can see even some kind of atmospheric mystic, which is not out of the picture and looks harmonious. The characters are empty and superficial, but they do not require anything else in the film about two roots, a shootout and a gloomy villain, here all the beauty is not from the inside, but from the outside, so their lack of elaborate characters does not seem a disadvantage. I would like, except that some minor characters (such as a blonde special agent who constantly runs after the main characters, or the same stranger with whom Angelino falls in love) were revealed more clearly or the importance of other characters (such as a wrestler gang and a doctor from the laboratory) was more clearly substantiated.
Of course, the main thing here is visual. Not inferior to his previous above-mentioned work ' Concrete ' Japanese artists gave just mind-blowing backgrounds. Architecture, landscapes, colors, style and the atmosphere generated by all this is one of the things why you should watch this film more than once and not be afraid to pause it to see another panorama. The extreme level of detail and saturation of the picture is, of course, the hallmark of the studio, which gives its work a unique style. No less pleasing and ' French' part that was responsible for the design of the characters: the characters (especially the main ones) turned out to be very colorful and memorable in their minimalism. The fact that outwardly they are significantly different from other characters (the vast majority of which are depicted cutely caricatured), makes the perception of the story a special one, charming with its freedom-loving approach to drawing, often inherent in purely author's works.
There is something strange in the animation and narrative ' Mamolyubov' that did not allow me to experience the purest and so long-awaited delight. The animation is honestly not bad, it is quite dynamic and even not clumsy at all, revealing in all its glory in moments of action. The ice cream van chase scene is without a doubt the best action scene in the movie. But continually in epic moments I had a slight but irritating feeling that something was missing. Perhaps it seemed to me that the staging of action could be made much grander, so that in the timing of such scenes there was not a millisecond of delay and downtime, because the incredible potential of the style of the work without problems gives tremendous opportunities. This feeling can be described as ' did not press ': it is not strong, non-lethal, but in such a cartoon it is hurtful to miss every moment that could be more beautiful and cooler. Such moments were probably in every action scene, which slightly darkened the overall impression, especially since the film is based on such a narrative. However, in fairness, these are already quite high levels of study, to which not everyone reaches, especially in such a painstaking and very complex business as animation.
As a result, 'Mutafakers' is not an epochal and not a grinding cartoon, but it is still a very beautiful, unique and interesting work, from which one should not expect too much and certainly not take it seriously. Not a satire, not a criticism or a statement: this film is just a good and very creative action comedy about shooting, explosions, mat and murder, with an impressive picture and a powerful soundtrack.
7 out of 10