Golgo 13: The Professional Urban Vision 90 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles Released:11/01/2005 Reviewed: 11/29/2005

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It's like this: I love The Professional. No matter how much I might bemoan the fate of the more 'normal' anime fan in the United States, the ortacizing, the jeering -- why just two nights ago I was flagrantly teased by a pretty lady for liking anime** -- and I'm fairly normal for a guy who likes cartoons! Imagine the strife it causes for social rejects who really CAN'T string two words together. The ruinous reputation doesn't even give them a shot out the door, not that the worst of them would know what to do with the chance if they ever got it, but because of anime's poor reputation in American they're not even given that tiny glimmer of hope.

Movies like The Professional are the reason why anime has a bad reputation. They're gory and filled with gratuitous sex, often the dubs are peppered with impromptu profanity. Back some 20 years ago this guy Carl Macek figured out that people were really responding to movies with lady's tits and exploding bodies in them. If the lady's tits could explode... well then, all the better! Now Macek was absolutely correct, but due to the fact that Streamline was basically the de facto anime provider in chief for the US for quite some time meant what the public basically understood came from their browsing experience at their local video rental store: big boobs and exploded eyeballs. The Professional comprises all these things and more. Hardly a minute goes by where there isn't an exposed boob, or weird psychedelic sex scene, or incredibly uncomfortable squirm-incuding prelude to a rape. Even some relatively benign things are just plain weird. The beginning of the movie immediately cuts from a completed assassination to our main character Golgo 13 banging the living daylights out of some obscure redhead. Needless to say, they don't bother to give her a name, or even any lines of dialogue besides "Oh yeah!" and "OH YEAH!"

The reason I love The Professional is because it doesn't lie to you. It's there to show you some titties and some action, much like a good majority of what ELSE is out there in anime today. The difference is that Golgo 13 does all these things and presents you with them right upfront while shows like Karate Cowboy Mammary Madness X-23 (KCNMX23) act like they're totally being normal when they have scenes of women firing pistols solely with the use of their bottomless cleavage pit. Golgo 13 is not about to hide around cutesy girls and retarded mascots. All the characters are ugly and they bang a lot, just like a real anime fan... except for the 'banging' part. In this movie we meet Golgo 13, aka Duke Togo, who is an international man of intrigue. He's basically James Bond, except he actually kills people and he's a lot more stoic and brutish looking. Golgo is hired to kill the son of wealthy industrialist Leonard Dawson. It's a perfectly logical conclusion that Dawson wouldn't take too kindly to this, the nouveau Rockefeller immediately sets his sights on erasing the killer from this mortal coil with the utmost in brutality. What follows is a series of hook-handed CIA agents, killer gymnasts, bombs, and bizarrely effeminate mercenaries. The contents of which are never without the essential action cartoon staples of motion lines and freeze frames. Golgo is inured in the fight of his life and, for some reason, we of all people are allowed to commit voyeurism during.

I think you can see where I'm going with this. This movie is awesome. Betrayals and shady backroom government dealings are par for the course. Golgo, his companions, and his OTHER (female, wink wink!) companions are beset on all sides by the most terrible of the terrible. Of course this involves a lot of people blowing up in fashions I can describe as spectacular. As if that wasn't enough, Duke Togo is voiced by Gregory Snegoff, who I'm quite certain is the same man that voiced the comparatively badass Taki in the comparatively SPECTACULAR Wicked City, which is basically the same movie as The Professional, only in that one all the icky sex is performed by aliens. Golgo 13 doesn't have a totally bangin' trailer like Wicked City. But it's still good! If you can bear the fact that Japan will try once again to relentlessly pummel the American people into the ground as stereotypically fat, loud, and evil then you're positively guaranteed a good time. The Professional might not have the fancy CG (this picture will make you cry) that modern movies utilizes, but its main character smokes the same cigarettes as I do. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. If you want someone to blame for you not being able to show off your massive collection of Pokemon cards to Suzy a the Stuff'n'Shop, blame Golgo 13, but I think you'd be better served by just sitting back and enjoying a prime bit of 80s sex and violence. They don't make enough movies like Golgo 13 anymore. It gives you exactly what it says it will: ridiculous action at a ridiculous pace and a stalwart, almost invincible, main character to shrug it all off like it was nothing.

**Don't worry, she got hers.