Toronto After Dark! Mr. Matt Brown talks Redline

The dead walked in Toronto today, but our annual zombie hoard were easily outpaced for sheer liveliness by the ballfuck madness of Redline, screened at the Toronto Underground this afternoon. The animé racing adventure had nothing to do with zombies – a zombie double-feature of Deadheads and War of the Dead played later in the evening – but was far and away the biggest thrill-ride to hit After Dark’s schedule so far this year. I watch animé films only once in a while; after Redline, I’ve had all the fuel I’m gonna need for years.

Introducing the film, Toronto After Dark programmer Peter Kuplowsky called Redline “Speed Racer on acid, which makes it acid on acid,” and he’s in the ballpark. (Around these parts, a Speed Racer comparison is a badge of honour, not shame.) The film involves a disaffected racer with a pompadour the size of a dolphin’s head, who enters a mega-race called Redline. The race is held (illegally?) on an alien planet called Roboworld (of course).

The particulars aren’t important. What matters is that Redline is the kind of animé where the Japanese non-sequiturs seem to flow with the picture instead of against it, adding to the madcap glee of the thing rather than tossing you out of the storyline. When the evil general, who looks like the love-baby of Lord Dredd and Sise Fromm, advises that the race can’t be allowed to enter Zone 7X, because that’s where Funky Boy is sleeping, it seems to make perfect sense. (Funky Boy, incidentally, is a giant-sized monster. What does he have to do with a race? About as much as the evil general.)

Meanwhile, the race is populated by crab-scaled weirdos, six-armed mutants, and a pair of pop star girls whose car transforms into a pink humanoid robot, with the drivers controlling it from the boobs. There’s a thug who becomes “impossibly strong when he cries,” and a girl named Cherry Boy Hunter, and all the other various Japanesisms you would expect. The boys get to be bounty hunters, and the girls get to be frequently topless. A lonely man behind me kept whistling unconsciously every time breasts were bared. Poor fellow.

Though its kitchen-sink approach to storytelling gets a little wearying by the time the big race is unfolding in the midst of a war and a giant monster fight, Redline closes with a grand finale that genuinely nears the sublime, incorporating a ghostly thumbs-up from the past, the dolphin-sized pompadour, and the word “love” inscribed on the screen. It’s a hell of a lot of fun.

Redline was preceded by my buddy Sean Wainsteim’s film Lost for Words, which should be mandatory viewing for Rob Ford, Doug Ford, and the entire team of Ford Nation goons – except that they probably wouldn’t understand it, not having likely entered a library at any point in their lives. But whatever, they’ll like the puppets at least – being puppets themselves.

- Matt Brown

Matt's gonna check in throughout the rest of the Toronto After Dark Film Festival with his musings. In the meantime, follow him on Twitter, and be sure to listen to the MAMO podcast for even more Matt Brown goodness