This huge-scale live-ish action 2019 realisation of Alita works much better than the recent adaptation of another manga/anime classic, Ghost In The Shell. The swift and efficient story-setting at the start is matched by excellent detailed visual world-building, and very quickly it becomes clear that the action/fight sequences are brutal, fast and very enjoyable, and also surprisingly violent for a 12A-rated film (no doubt the old 'fantasy violence' excuse comes into play). Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali and Ed Skrein all deliver well, with Rosa Salazar engaging through the CGI as Alita and even Keean Johnson managing better than most in similar thankless floppy-haired-eyelash-heavy-boyfriend roles, but occasionally the story and motivations are a little fuzzy and underwritten, especially for the antagonists, but overall the writers have condensed the sprawling fiction into a lively and streamlined single movie. The only other real problem the film has is the over-familiarity of its influences (Robocop, Rollerball, Blade Runner and so on) and products it has subsequently influenced, but it is all done with a lavish budget and state-of-the-art CG and 3D techniques. It is remarkable to think of Robert Rodriguez's cinematic journey from the micro-budget El Mariachi to the FX-excesses of Alita, and even though this movie has James Cameron stamped all over it, surely this Rodriguez-directed version is a lot more fun and energetic than a full-on Cameron-fest might have been. This is hard sci-fi that might not find a wider audience, but for fans of the genre, in spite of a couple of narrative hiccups, Alita delivers spectacularly.
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