钢铁巨人 The Iron Giant review by MARC FORTIER

With their woefully unsuccessful animation department floundering, Warner Bros. has pinned its hopes for cartoon greatness on a 50-foot-tall robot from outer space. Lucky for the studio, The Iron Giant is possibly the most completely realized American animated film of the decade. Though its thematic balancing act between the mature and juvenile is at times awkward, Giant's story often tips in favor of grown-ups, heartily rewarding them for braving the tyke-ridden cineplex.
Adapted from the Ted Hughes novel by Simpsons veteran Brad Bird, Iron Giant focuses on a small town in 1957, where American public life is rife with red-scare paranoia and the military is all but looking for an excuse to start a nuclear war. It's just about the worst political climate for a colossal, metal-eating robot to appear in, especially when he drops out of the sky without explanation.

Luckily, the towering machine-man lands in the isolated suburban inlet of Rockwell, Maine, far from the government's prying eyes. The amnesiac android (voiced by Saving Private Ryan's Vin Diesel) befriends nine-year-old Hogarth (newcomer Eli Marienthal) and beatnik-ish junk artist Dean (Harry Connick Jr.). Soon Hogarth "adopts" the robot and teaches him English, among other things, but learns nothing of his identity. The robot's true purpose is revealed when the young lad triggers its auto-defense system by waving around a toy gun, activating a deadly array of high-tech weaponry and causing quite a ruckus. It isn't long before the unlucky automaton is discovered by promotion-buckin' FBI Agent Kent Mansley (Thelma & Louise's Christopher McDonald), and a showdown with the military ensues.

While its fluid animation breaks no new technical ground a la Ghost in the Shell, Giant does seamlessly integrate digital and hand-drawn animation. The climactic scene featuring the newly transformed, battle-ready robot is flawlessly executed and illustrated, reminiscent of classic anime like Robotech. The characters' facial animation shows an unparalleled degree of expressiveness, and Vin Diesel gives the robot's speech in an impeccably metallic rumble that sounds like Tom Waits on ether.

And while the recent Tarzan carefully cultivated kiddie appeal, Giant refrains from pandering to younger audiences -- it contains not one woodland creature, cutesy sidekick, or song-and-dance number. The storytelling is left to the dialogue, action, and spectacularly rendered animation; a simple but powerful approach recalling Hitchcock's idea of "Pure Cinema."

A textbook example of emotional landscaping, Iron Giant presents the Communist-dreading, atomic-bomb fearing, conformist backdrop of the '50s as a mirror to the internal decisions made by the characters. As Hogarth's staple viewing incorporates both nuclear safety propaganda films and War of the Worlds-style alien invasion flicks, the arrival of the robot presents him with a reality that closely reflects his fantasy world, yet the film's events force him to challenge it.

Though it deals with themes most American animation films rarely touch on (such as atomic Armageddon) Giant doesn't quite finish the job. For example, the horrifically hilarious "duck-'n'-cover" filmstrip scene is incredibly effective at instilling the film with a paranoid subtext, but its short duration leaves the audience hungry for more thought-provoking material.

Despite its minimal glitches, Iron Giant dispells the myth that animation should only provide marginal entertainment for the adults accompanying kids to dancing-squirrel musicals. By pushing the cartoon art form's envelope even further, Warner Bros.' latest offering is the front-runner for best animated film of the year.

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