Golgo 13: Queen Bee (1998)
Review by Doc Ezra
Film:
DVD:

Written by Akihiro Tago & Matt Aichir, based on the manga by Takao Saito
Directed by Osamu Dezaki
Character Design by Akio Sugino & Hiroshi Uchida

Features:

• Commentary track with director and producer
  
• Remastered Dolby 5.1 audio
  
• English and Japanese language tracks
  
• DVD-ROM content
  

Doc's Anime Warnings:

• Naughty bits
• People ripped up with machine guns
• Politicians with smack habits
• Implied child abuse

Rating: NR, suggested for mature audiences only.

Anamorphic: Nope.

My Advice: Pass.

The original anime about this mysterious assassin, Golgo 13: The Professional, is a cult favorite, a movie in the vein of Leon or La Femme Nikita. Golgo 13 is a man with no past (and little personality, actually) who takes absurd amounts of money to eliminate "problems" for various clients, no questions asked. In Golgo 13: Queen Bee, an aspiring presidential candidate is receiving threats from a mysterious woman known only as "Queen Bee," and the politico's campaign advisor/veep candidate hires Mr. 13 to take care of her before harm comes to the candidate.

The woman in question turns out to be the bastard offspring of said candidate and a middle-class woman of whom his family did not approve. When the family began to worry about the political future of their favorite son, they had the woman killed and her daughter kidnapped, assaulted, and packed off somewhere remote. So she's back, with an army of paramilitary paramours willing to die for her (largely because she seems to be sleeping with most, if not all, of them).

With this, the movie is off at a gallop, packing all this backstory, several running gun battles, and a half-dozen gratuitous sex scenes into a scant 60 minutes. The result is a rushed mess of thin plot, thinner characters, and cheesy T & A. Rather than a taut action thriller, we get a half-assed attempt to cash in on a popular character with a truly abysmal movie that's too short to really do justice to any of the characters of concepts involved.

It's a shame, really, since the character of Golgo 13 has great potential. But when your title character gets a tiny handful of lines throughout the film, and no real look into his head (should he kill the girl, or is she justified in her quest for vengeance, etc.), it's hard to really find the story compelling. Likewise the Queen herself, who gets more lines, but spends more time boning various members of her private army than actually doing anything interesting. If the movie were stretched to twice its current length, there's a chance they could have salvaged a decent anime out of this mess, but only if they used the increased space on plot and character development instead of a few more scenes of Queen Bee naked with one of her goons.

The DVD is labelled a "Special Edition," but I'm not sure what's supposed to be so special. There is a commentary track, which is notable for an anime title, but the commentary serves to add very little to one's understanding or appreciation of the movie. The director and producer seem uninterested in explaining how they arrived at their creative decisions, and instead expound on the popularity of the title character. This comes across like a justification for making the movie, no matter how bad it is. "Hey, everybody loves Golgo 13! If we put him in another movie, it should do well. Even if we have a shoddy script and only make it an hour long!" Not particularly enlightening.

If you're looking for an action thriller about a professional assassin, rent Leon, or even the first Golgo 13 movie. But this one boils down to very little but boning, bloodletting, and blowing stuff up. And even those facets are so trite and derivative as to make them unworthy of your time.