Did you people see the same film I saw?

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Mamoru Oshii has created an amazing work of political and military intrigue wholly different from the haunted proto-ghost story of Patlabor: The Movie. Although it parallels its predecessor in some plot elements (lone madman with delusions of affecting a world-change), the movie departs from all other aspects of "typical" Japanese cartoon work and enters a realm reserved for potboilers like Three Days of the Condor and The Hunt for Red October.Commander Gotoh, caught between his loyalty to his men, his sense of duty and his relationship with one of his troops and a coming civil war finds himself on the sword point of a massive socio-political upheaval with overtones of covert U.S. backing. What it all leads to is a potential breakdown of civilian governance of Japan and an end to that nation's independent self-rule. The terroristic acts of a lone military mastermind who bears a grudge against short sighted bureaucrats - and has the reasons for his contempt proved time and again during the crisis he engineers - push Japan into a state of near panic as the military and the police including Commander Gotoh's Special Vehicles Unit face off against one another. Will the final showdown end in the madness of a civil war? Watch the movie, find out.Forget preconceptions about Japanese cartoons, and discard the mental image brought up by the "giant robot" on the cover of the DVD. The "Labors" serve as mere background icons (much as the powered armor did in R.A. Heinlein's seminal Starship Troopers (not the execrable movie loosely based on that work)) and as subtle statements on the separation of men from society by duty and law.Please, if you have a prejudice against Japanimation, don't let it override your judgment. Don't miss this one. It's that good.

Patlabor 2 is an incredible movie all around. Let me begin. Point#1: The Story. The story is superior to Patlabor 1's by far. It is more enthralling and has all questions answered nicely. Point#2: The Directing. Mamoru Oshii does it again! This was his first film when he started becoming artistic, and he already has it mastered. He manages to visualize Ito's screenplay so well, it is just breathtaking. Point#3: The Music. Another beautiful score from Kenji Kawai! He makes some beautifully animated scenes and makes them even more beautiful! He was definitely ready to compose a movie such as Ghost In The Shell. Conclusion: Just watch it. Go out to Blockbuster and rent this movie. Then, buy it. If they don't have it, DEMAND IT! That's all I have to say. See you later. Rating: 5 out of 5

As with Patlabor 1, there's a facade of misleading marketing around this film. There's a picture of a big robot on the packaging, and any teaser will probably promise you a non-stop mecha blasting fest. This is, simply put, a shameless lie. Patlabor 2 is a political thriller (often likened to a Tom Clancy novel with good reasons), and a very slow, brooding, talky, philosophical one at that. Big robots just happen to exist in it's setting, but their presence in the film is so slight you'll hardly notice them.What you will notice, however, are some wonderful visuals and music, and a story that asks the viewer many daring, insightful questions about the world of today.The plot centers around a few terrorist attacks on Tokyo taking place in the winter of 2002 (note that the film was made in 1993). Most of these attacks are really fake, or harmless makebelieve-attacks, but they're enough to create panic and to cause the established sense of security to crumble to bits. Captains Gotoh and Nagumo of the Special Vehicle Units try to unmask the man, and especially the ideas behind these staged attacks. Everything points to a certain Yukihito Tsuge, who's an old familiar of Nagumo.What makes this film special is the way we're given insights into Tsuge's beliefs through the dialogues. The viewer is directly confronted with some very powerful questions. The state of being that we call "peace" in the western world - just how peaceful is it really? How fragile is it, and how much do we deserve this relative 'peace' compared to the prices mostly others pay for it? The film is rife with such questions, and they leave a considerable impact on the viewer. I daresay Patlabor 2 is worth it's price alone for being confronted with such thought-provoking issues set to some of the most beautifully haunting images and music ever put on screen.The animation is definitely finely-crafted (there's a scene where helicopters swoop over the city who's smoothness has to be seen to be believed), but it's biggest strong point is the way it's all been directed. Slow, sweeping shots of the intricate semi-futuristic cityscape are the order of the day, with many other impressively beautiful shots. But it's the music that really stole the show for me, with a wonderful use of mostly gentle and haunting melodies. The soundtrack is a true masterpiece, whose tunes will remain with you for a long time after viewing the film. It adds a dimension to the atmosphere that really can't be described very well on paper, so I'll just say it's powerful and beautifully-crafted stuff. The image of snowflakes drifting down onto tanks stationed all over Tokyo while a soft, ghostly melody plays in the background is a good example of the sort of moment where Patlabor 2 shines. It doesn't shine all the way, though. There are a few flaws to this film, which make it hard to recommend to everybody. The talkiness, for one thing, sometimes really goes over-the-top. Instead of showing you what happened, a pretty important development is sometimes only mentioned in a conversation. This makes it difficult to keep up all the time, especially as the viewer is sometimes assumed to be an expert on political powergames; -"Some minister has just done something or other, and then this and that happened" -"I see... that means so-and-so plans to do yakkity-something..." Dialogues like that pop up a few times in the film and manage to be pretty unpleasant. Likewise, there's no gentle introduction to Patlabor newcomers, so it's recommended that you've seen at least the first Patlabor movie before tackling this. While the few scenes of how the regular Patlabor cast have gotten on with their lives are fairly unimportant, being at least somewhat familiar with them is a welcome help in following a sometimes overwhelmingly complex film (I mean that in a good way, though ^^).Patlabor 2 will never be suited to general public tastes, as it's simply too complex, talky and basically 'different' for anyone just seeking some escapist fun. The DragonBall and Akira crowd need not look into this until they've learned to stop referring to the anime medium as 'ménga movies' while mistaking it for a slew of violent cyberpunk slop which they consider 'kewl' or 'kickass' or whatever. Same to the general Hollywood crowd who'd freak out at the idea of a film demanding efforts from the viewer - Patlabor 2 demands lots of efforts, but has something special to reward you with.Patlabor 2 serves it's doses of food for thought raw, and it takes some effort to swallow them. But I'd say that effort is well worth it. For the unique, powerful atmosphere alone, this is more than worth a look. I guess "haunting" is really the most suitable word to describe Patlabor 2's superb feel. It literally does haunt you, with questions about the state of the society we live in that you can't possibly turn a blind eye on (in fact, after the attacks on America in September 2001, Patlabor 2's messages have become ironically up-to-date in their relevance). And a film that achieves such effects so very well deserves to be seen and to be praised. And then there's -that- music. Absolutely brilliant, it makes this film a must-hear as well as a must-see.

Patlabor 2's material is complex and very promising, but when all is said and done, a hell of a lot more was said than done. After watching this and getting all the numerous relationships right, I still felt noteably unsatisfied.Patlabor 2 is a very stylishly directed story of Japan in the near future, being held hostage by a terrorist who masterminds a breakdown of civil rule in retribution for the government's incompetence. At the beginning of the movie, his machinations are set in motion, and at the end, there is the lacklustre uninspired payoff. Inbetween lies the sprinkling of philosophical monologues of sporadic merit, all the while the plot somehow unfolds.I say "somehow" because I really don't know how. I guess I'll have to take the characters' words for it because, for the better part of the picture, their blatant expositions are the only way the audience finds out that something really big supposedly just happened -- talk about phoned in. For all it's stylish direction and philosophising characters, Patlabor 2 leaves the viewer with very little to digest about it's characters and universe, and as such does equally little to justify being a motion picture.2/4