The eyes have it. Alita (Rosa Salazar, with some CGI enhancement) has remarkably large brown eyes, giving her the air of an earnest child. She falls in love like a schoolgirl, with a boy named Hugo (โHugoโฆโ she sighs, watching him depart on his futuristic bike), and gets all a-flutter at the taste of chocolate. To be fair, sheโs never had it before, having been found by Dr. Ido (Christoph Waltz) on a scrapyard in the 26th-century metropolis of Iron City, โ300 years after the Fallโ. Alita is just a cyborg head at that point โ but the good doctor grafts the head on the body of his late daughter, giving her life. No, thatโs not creepy at all.
Thatโs par for the course in Alita: Battle Angel, an impressive yet somehow lacking sci-fi actioner where bodies are constantly being cut up and patched back together. The film has a swanky pedigree: not only did it cost a reported $200 million, not only do the cast have four Oscars between them, but the director is Robert Rodriguez of Sin City fame, and the writer-producer is James Cameron whoโฆ well, we all know who James Cameron is. Cameronโs always been drawn by damaged or mismatched bodies: The Terminator had one of the first movie cyborgs โ a mash-up of flesh and metal โ while the hero in Avatar sought release from his own crippled body. Alita is another such mash-up, โthe face of an angel and a body built for battleโ.
The film works better in the first half, when Alita still has a vulnerable girlโs body; the mismatch is stronger. Something is lost when sheโs reunited with her โbody built for battleโ about halfway through, or maybe itโs the realisation that sheโs had her coming-of-age and we still have an hour to go (the film is way overlong). โIโm tired of it! He just wants me to be his perfect little girl!โ huffs Alita in the early stages, annoyed by Idoโs silly rules like any rebellious teenager โ then she swings into action, beating up a trio of street thugs, and itโs all quite amusing. Ido concludes that she must be a war machine made by URM (the United Republics of Mars) before the Fall, and Alita rolls her eyes. โSo Iโm 300 years old?โ she teases, doing a little-old-lady voice for a joke. Ido looks at her: โSweetheart, you are,โ he replies simply. As awakenings go, itโs a satisfying one.
The action is always superb, but thereโs just too much of it โ including three (3) different fights with the same hulking monster โ and the rest is often half-baked. โWhose body is this? Who am I?โ cries Alita (echoes of Ghost in the Shell) โ but the answers to those questions, like the sinister โsky cityโ of Zalem that looms over the Iron City plebs like a broken promise, will presumably be found in the next instalment. Zalem has echoes of Young Adult fiction (and films like The Hunger Games), that whole concept of a cold, aloof aristocracy calling the shots, but Alita โ based on a Japanese manga comic โ doesnโt offer very much world-building, unless you count the class of โhunter warriorsโ who operate like vigilantes against the general lawlessness. They donโt do much, but they do have names like โMcTeague the Dogmasterโ so I guess thatโs something.
โItโs a harsh world,โ Hugo warns Alita, but it doesnโt seem all that harsh. Rodriguez departs from the usual murky Blade Runner visuals in giving this dystopia a bright, sunlit look โ a refreshing change, lending a touch of a kidsโ TV series. (Thereโs actually a moment, right after Alita finds her real, URM body, when the camera pulls back, the music swells and the film cuts to black, that feels exactly like the end of a TV episode; you half-expect credits to start rolling.) None of this is bad, necessarily, in fact itโs quite likeable. Alita: Battle Angel mightโve been a winner at 90 minutes and more of the winsome banter of the first half โ but Cameron has bigger fish to fry (the ending clearly signals a sequel), even throwing in a touch of Titanic at the climax. I wonโt spoil it, but suffice to say it doesnโt really work.
Anything else? A game called Motorball, played on skates, whose only rule is apparently to get the ball by any means necessary. The regal presence of Jennifer Connelly (wasted, as usual) with a bindi-like โMark of Zalemโ on her forehead. Oh, and of course Alitaโs ongoing crush on Hugo. โCan a cyborg love a human?โ she wonders, the kind of weighty question thatโs just filling up space in such a weightless movie โ then again, maybe what Alita: Battle Angel needed most was precisely more emotional investment, the better to go with those big brown eyes. Less battle, more angel.
DIRECTED BY Robert Rodriguez
STARRING Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly
SCI FI ACTION
US 2019 122 mins
