Review of Riding Bean

Introduction

When I was a kid, I used to love cheesy eighties action movies. Show me a cheap action flick, with a muscle-bound hero with an IQ lower than the body count he leaves behind, a talent with painful one-liners, and a complete disregard for the laws of physics, and I was in movie heaven. One of my overriding memories is of John Rambo taking on an armoured helicopter gunship with a bow and arrow. Now if you crossed one of those movies with an anime, Riding Bean would be the result, 46 minutes of beefcake powered muscle movie.

The Bean Bandit is the muscle in question, a courier par excellence, with the latest in driving technology and tougher than a raging bull that`s high on a mixture of coke and amphetamines. He`s not the kind of person that you mess with, which some people have yet to learn. A bodyguard named Morris shows up with a little girl in tow. He claims to have foiled a kidnapping, and hires Bean and his partner Rally Vincent to return the child Chelsea to her father George Grimwood. But Bean is being framed for the kidnapping, while the kidnappers are taking off with the ransom and the girl`s father. Now all Bean has to do is avoid the police, find the kidnappers, free Grimwood, earn a nice couple of million dollars, and prevent collateral damage. I was lying about the collateral damage.

Video

Riding Bean gets a transfer that is definitely showing its age. It`s a creaky Animeigo presentation, which is clear and colourful enough, but it`s soft and prone to print damage. Still the animation is of OVA quality, and competently and vibrantly done.

Audio

You just get the English dub, which is on occasion painfully bad to listen to. Fortunately it`s one of those it`s so bad it`s funny dubs, the sort that you would get on old kung fu movies. There is a nice selection of music for the soundtrack. The DD 2.0 stereo is a little wimpy, but not overly so.

Features

Nada.

Conclusion

Holy crap! Bean is one tough mutha. He`s so tough he wears a bulletproof headband, and he uses it. He`s the kind of person who needs a hot frying pan in the face as an alarm clock. He`s the kind of guy who chews steel bolts and spits out brass tacks. He`s as unreconstructed a male as Golgo, another anime throwback, but Riding Bean makes up for it by playing it strictly tongue in cheek. Also with action practically from beginning to end, it doesn`t let up.

Riding Bean truly is an eighties action flick writ small. It`s got the cheesy dialogue, the gratuitous violence, and the pointless T&A. The bad guys are truly villainous; Semmerling comes across as a lesbian paedophile that has no qualms about sacrificing her henchman, including her prepubescent lover. Bean and his partner Rally are antiheroes in the truest sense of the word. All they care about is the money, and if some innocent bystanders, hardworking cops, or destructible scenery get in the way, tough. Bean has a soft spot for innocent kids, just so that we know he`s the good guy, but that doesn`t stop him from doing what must be done.

Riding Bean is a car chase from beginning to end, broken up with the occasional bit of exposition. The characters have a crude charm to them, and the action scenes are well animated. It doesn`t matter that Bean manages to pull off umpteen impossible feats before breakfast, as this film is fun, forgettable fun to be sure, but fun nonetheless. I paid 99p for it in a sale, and that`s money well spent. I wouldn`t pay much more than that though. If Riding Bean catches your fancy, keep an eye out for the Gunsmith Cats spin-off featuring Rally Vincent.