This genuinely eye-popping all-CGI 2013 reboot for brooding cosmic swashbuckler Captain Harlock – who has been something of a cult manga favourite since the 70s – is now getting a belated UK cinema release, and the state-of-the-art spectacle of its hyper-vivid space battles will certainly benefit from being blasted into your visual field via as big a screen as is possible. Much of the human race is facing extinction in space, unable to return to an Earth locked down by an elite cabal; but Harlock is dead set on a homecoming, and has some pretty wild ideas about how to make it happen. To this end, he steams around the galaxy in his smoke-belching, skull-faced space train of doom, evading the cabal as it harangues him with sky-filling geometric starfighter formations and god-powered superweapons. Further complications arise – spies, betrayal, dark matter, time travel, that sort of thing. The setup is great, then, but the follow-through less so: the scar-faced, cape-swishing Harlock himself is, alas, a bit of a sulky bore, and the supporting players – who actually get more screen time than the main man – aren’t a great deal more interesting. But oh, those visuals: veering between gleaming, clean-lined techno-lust and a punkier, junk-space aesthetic, it really is a marvel to look at: an artfully dazzling distillation of videogamey flash, proggy space-majesty and Final Fantasy flounce.
