Golgo 13: The Professional

1983 "He shoots...he scores...he'll blow you away!"
6.8| 1h31m| en
Details

Indestructible to his enemies and irresistible to women, the professional assassin codenamed Golgo 13 is shrouded in mystery and anonymity. If you're on his hit list, you're already dead. Always hired on his reputation alone, Golgo never breaks a contract. Can he survive the combined forces of the FBI, CIA, the Pentagon and the U.S. Army? Has the nameless agent finally met his match against the superhuman powers of the Snake and the twin evils of the psychopathic mercenaries, Gold and Silver?

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Trailers & Clips

Also starring Tetsurō Sagawa

Reviews

2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!
Dorathen Better Late Then Never
Yazmin Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.
Brooklynn There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.
thegreatwhy-312-879122 Having never read the original series, I'll have to go with what's in the movie. Golgo 13 is slow, pretentious and predictable to the point of boredom. Every single character is an off-the-mark stereotype and every single situation is a worn-out trope you've seen in either a 007 or Dirty Harry movie, making the movie a simple collage of scenes you might have liked from other movies (kinda like the recent "Jupiter Ascending"). Throughout the movie, events keep happening "just because", without any regard to personality or logic, and that emphasize even more the "patchwork" aspect of the movie. The movie's only redeeming quality is the visual impact, but the slow pans and masterful lighting effects are overplayed to the point of exhaustion, and do nothing to improve the movie's terrible pacing (though it gets somewhat better). Sometimes in manga the main character is intentionally made shallow and only marginally interesting, to bring out the secondary characters and help the writer focus on their own story (see Hokuto No Ken), however the device here fails miserably, because every single character is just as shallow, often possessing a single character trait. All in all, one of the worst anime I've ever seen: this movie has nothing to offer you.
Viva_Chiba I never read the Golgo 13 manga, i played 2 games on the NES and i liked the character, the way how James Bond should be !From what i know, Golgo 13 is a huge manga series in Japan that it's keeping being published even today, it's a cultural phenomenon.This anime is a masterpiece, very good, better than expected, better than a dozen of "James Bond" movies better than all the "Bourne trilogy".Plot: after having successfully completed an assignment in Italy, someone sets up a trap for Golgo 13 (AKA: Duke Togo), but he manages to escape alive, now he must discover why and who wanted him dead......This Anime features lots of blood, high body count and nudity, almost every girl in the whole movie gets naked. There is also a good soundtrack, with good jazz scores.Highly recommended if you want to get introduced to the character, don't miss it and Hollywood, put your hands down on Golgo 13, go produce another crappy kid friendly action movie.
Perception_de_Ambiguity The plot is a good backdrop for the style and the action, but it's irrelevant to the quality of the film.'Golgo 13' loves showing things indirectly, be it by looking at things through a mirror, by looking through an obstacle like a fence, by showing the effect of an action symbolically, or (beware the twist) by only showing the effect to imply the action, OR simply by obscuring the view with bright light, smoke, flames, spurting blood,...It even more loves looking at single elements individually. They say about Leone's and Tarantino's movies that even the smallest character is the star of the movie for the moment he is in that widescreen frame. In 'Golgo 13' every inanimate object, animal or body part can be the movie's star for a moment. A finger cocking a gun becomes an act of god.The style is over the top from beginning to end, less by means of multiplication of the glorified things and actions but more by means of subtraction of unnecessary elements. We know people need a floor to walk on, we don't need to see the floor at any given moment. We also know where a character is at once we have seen a wide shot, we can see the character in blank space or any other background that reflects his thoughts or emotions and we still remember what the factual surroundings are.Although many of those approaches are typical of Japanese animated films not many are as convicted in following them or as inventive in their execution.The visual power of the movie doesn't come from the individual images, the key of its power lies in the motion.There isn't a sequence without movement and should there be such a rare moment then it isn't there to last for more than a second. It's like hungry vultures circling around dead meat for hours and hours with deadly patience. The cadaver can't run away but it very well can be snatched away by competitive scavengers. - 'Golgo 13' reeks of death. Everyone will die, it's just a question of when. Nihilism means seeing everyone dead already. To the characters in 'Golgo 13' taking a life is equalized by the notion of creating something new, the notion of giving birth to death. In this world without meaning the assassin Golgo 13 has the edge because he counts himself into the equation. He won't think twice before risking his life, he looks death in the face like he would look in the face of his mother. To be is not to be. By the end the whole world seems to come crashing down and no character cares to go on living anymore. The movie is all attitude, no feeling, and it's so consequent at this that it becomes a statement.
solitaire_77 The baddest professional asassain I've ever seen! Good anime flick. The main character, golgo 13 is a character so stoic, so stonefaced, that he hardly cracks even a hint of emotion even when in the act of having hot sex. There's a good deal of that in the movie, and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the plot, but that's the standard bug about most anime movies I've seen. Oh well, the kiddos should get a good thrill out of it anyway. The action is intense! This guy is an amazing shot, with either his modified M 16 or his revolver. My favorite scene is when he goes head to head with Snake (a repulsive, toothless villain who uses bladed yo-yos to kill his victims. I'm not making this up,) in an elevator. The final brawl he had with the twin killers Silver and Gold was cool too, but given how much they hyped up the two characters beforehand, I frankly expected them to put up more of a fight. Anyway, it's a great anime flick.