MOVIE REVIEWS : ‘Professional’ Treads Violent Old Ground

Based on a popular series of manga, or graphic novels, “The Professional,” a new Japanese animated feature opening at the Nuart Theatre today for a five-day run, repeats all the fast-paced cliches of the genre. There are car crashes, motorcycle wrecks, machine gun battles, helicopter attacks, stabbings, fistfights, martial arts duels, explosions and gallons of blood-red paint. But despite this litany of violence, “The Professional” never seems exciting--or even interesting.

Part of the problem lies with the void at the center of the film. The dubious hero, Golgo 13, is a paid assassin who “has no emotion other than his pride in his record that no target has ever escaped him”--and the character is so stiffly animated, it’s easy to believe. Grotesquely misproportioned, with a tiny head and outsized shoulders, Golgo maintains the same stolid sneer while shooting people, driving through a barrage of gunfire and making love to an assortment of badly drawn women.

Director Osamu Dezaki uses rapid cutting, split-screen imagery, computer graphics and slow pans over artwork from the original comics to try to infuse some energy into the hokey material, but it’s a losing battle. There’s not a credible character or situation in the film, even by the undemanding standards of action comic books. Greg Snegoff’s English dialogue ranges from merely silly to unintentionally hilarious.

A social psychologist could probably write a Ph.D. thesis on the meaning of a story in which a lone Japanese assassin triumphs over the combined resources of the FBI, the CIA, the Pentagon, the Mafia and the most powerful oil billionaire in the Western World. But only the most puerile viewer could describe “The Professional” (Times rated: Mature for violence, language and cartoon sex) as entertaining.

‘The Professional’

A TMS production, released by Streamline Pictures. Director Osamu Dezaki. Producers Yutaka Fujioka, Matachiro Yamamoto & Nobuo Inada adaptation produced and directed by Carl Macek. English dialogue and direction by Greg Snegoff. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.