Ray Gunn review – Brad Bird’s animated film-noir sci-fi caper is an old-school family classic

Brad Bird, the Spielberg of animation, applies his masterly authorial touch to a terrific family film that retrieves the genre from the doldrums of dull, AI-formulaic stories and visuals. This animation is smart, witty, humane: a fantasy spectacular with old-fashioned entertainment values and some amazing cityscape design showcasing a beguiling and sweet romance.

The setting is a city of marvels in a world to come, a retro-futurist urban landscape with hints of Metropolis and Blade Runner; there are plenty of regulation moving walkways, flying cars and eerie hologram billboards, yes, but a light touch to put the fun back into what could be just cliche. Here is where an old-school noir thriller is to take place with tough private detectives and bad guys wielding state-of-the-art laser-particle firearms (this explains the title, though I’d hoped that it might also include some reference to 1980s Republican politics). There are careworn cops, cynical club owners and alluring shady ladies with touches of Lana Turner and Veronica Lake. The airborne automobiles also have the bulbous lines of a previous century, and the TV monitors show black-and-white images; plasma flatscreens have evidently been disinvented.

Sam Rockwell voices the role of Raymond Gunn, an ex-cop turned gumshoe who left the police after covering up for the misdeeds of a female detective with whom he’d been poignantly in love; his tough persona covers a gallant softie. He lives in a world of racist bigotry towards aliens, and Ray takes some heat for working with Eyera (voiced by Tom Waits), an alien who, at the end of one bruising incident, is not admitted to a humans-only hospital. Ray’s path crosses with that of sultry singing superstar Venus Nova (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) whose creepy nogoodnik fourth husband Arnold (Bobby Cannavale) is having an affair with Venus’s stand-in double; he tries using this woman to fabricate bogus evidence of an affair which would lead to a lucrative divorce. (The divorce laws are a bit retro in this world as well.)

When Venus discovers his planned scam, she threatens to kill Arnold in front of witnesses, creating a murderous cloud over her reputation – but malevolent Arnold has something on her too. It all leads to a scary plot, involving Venus’s smoothie manager and first husband Barry (Alan Tudyk) and fez-wearing nightclub proprietor and mob boss Slugsy (Matt Berry), who comes on like a cross between Sydney Greenstreet and Jabba the Hutt.

There are some lovely set piece scenes – especially when Ray and Venus take to the floor at a club which offers a “zero gravity” interlude allowing its dancers and lovers the chance to float surreally around as if in space. We also get a bizarre interlude when a gun turns out to be – temporarily – capable of scrambling the limbs of those in its sights. And on top of all that, the film has something to say about algorithmic ads and data privacy. It’s a charming, very enjoyable movie with a big heart.