The Red Spectacles 4K 1987

The movie is set in the so-called world of Kerberos-saga, created by Oshii, which in addition to movies also includes radio plays, manga, and several books. Of all this variety, Russian viewers are most familiar with the anime “Jin-Rô”, to which Oshii, by the way, has a very indirect relation....

Kerberos, a special unit consisting of heavy armor-clad crime fighters, is disbanded, as the unit's operations raise questions from the government and the public - the “Cerberos” were too brutal. But the unit did not give up. Hunted down, they continued to resist to the end. One of the surviving “Cerberus” three years later returns to his hometown and tries to find people from his past - members of the squad, friends, acquaintances. He wanders around the city, through strange eateries, poorly lit streets, and suddenly faces a very active opposition to his search...

The Red Spectacles is Mamoru Oshii's first feature-length movie, and before that he only made anime. And we must warn you at once - despite the synopsis, this is a surreal art-house. David Lynch, if not nervously smoking on the sidelines, is at least eyeing “Spectacles” with suspicion. And if Lynch had decided to make a comedic action movie with minimal financial outlay, he probably would have made something similar. Nervous monochrome picture is full of freaky characters, getting into ridiculous situations and dialogues, revealing some details of the alternate-historical world, in which the USSR lost the Battle of Stalingrad, and Japan, unsuccessfully involved in World War II, was occupied by Germany. The movie also smells of Godard's work (which, by the way, Oshii repeatedly mentioned in his interviews). As for typical directorial motifs, there are plenty of them here. Long meditative panoramas and plans, political intrigues and conspiracies, a plot that involves a lot of battle scenes and technical gadgets, but focused more on the personalities of the characters.... Also available is Oshii's regular composer, Kenji Kawai, and a more or less regular co-screenwriter, Kazunori Ito. But since this is the first feature film directed by Oshii, many of his characteristic techniques are not yet so skillfully executed here.

All in all, it's a very special movie. If anyone decides to watch it after being inspired by “Jin-Rô”, they will probably be disappointed. Like Oshii's later works, this, the earliest one, is a “thing in itself” that you either accept or not....