Back when I did my Cowboy Bebop rewatch, I wasn’t able to find the movie (also known as Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door) anywhere. I was recently able to track it down and was finally able to watch it. It’s probably been about twenty years since I’ve seen this movie and didn’t remember anything about it. Since we have the whole crew here, the movie takes place between episodes 22 and 23 of the series. Let’s see how it holds up.

First off, the opening credits are different. Not as cool as what they used for the show, but still fun. The music throughout the movie is also different than the type of music they used in the show. The music works, but it gives the movie a different feel than the series.

In the opening scene, Spike walks in on a convenience store robbery with headphones on. He pretends he doesn’t know what’s going on and effortlessly takes out the robbers, even snatching food from one of them in the process. This is the cool Spike we’ve come to know from the series.

Later, Spike and Jet are playing a game called Shogi. Jet takes his time thinking of his next move while Spike is impulsive, like they were in the convenience store earlier. Ein, the Welsh corgi, jumps on the board and makes a good move for Jet. (The movie emphasizes how smart Eit is more than the series did.)

Meanwhile, Faye is tracking a hacker named Lee Samson who is supposed to be in a tanker truck. Faye sees a different man exit the truck and blow it up, releasing hazardous materials into the air, killing dozens of people.

Spike complains that they only have instant noodles to eat. Jet says they need a big bounty if Spike wants meat. (This was a common theme in the show as well.) Faye returns and they’re worried she’s been contaminated, but she’s actually fine. The crew decide to go after the truck bomber when they hear the bounty on him is 300 million woolongs.

Looking for a lead, Spike talks to several people around town, including the three old men who kept showing up in different locales during the series. He finds a man named Rashid on Moroccan Street who knows about the explosion. Rashid gives Spike a vase.

Jet and his old police buddy Bob are watching an old John Wayne western at a drive in. Bob tells Jet about a robbery from Cherious Medical. Cherious suspiciously didn’t file a police report.

Ed is able to enhance Faye’s video of the attack to see the truck bomber’s tattoo. It’s for Mars Army Special Forces 7th Division, which was disbanded three years ago in 2068. Most of them are dead now. Ein identifies the man as Vincent Volaju even though he supposedly died two years ago during the war on Titan. Ed gets an alert that Lee used his card again.

Vincent explains to a henchman that he’s planning another attack on Halloween because it’s the time when someone in purgatory can go to heaven.

Faye tracks Lee down to an arcade. He’s playing a shooting game. She shoots the screen with her real gun. Lee types on his belt, making the power go out. He escapes, but Faye gets his hat.

Spike brings home the vase and Ed jumps into it, finding a marble. She analyzes it. It’s full of nano machines. (The fact they don’t call them nanobots makes this movie seem old.)

Spike stakes out the medical company, posing as a janitor. The head of the company wants to eliminate Vincent and someone named Mendelo so the media won’t find out the illegal nano machines came from them. Spike fights and falls in love with a woman with the same wrist tattoo as Vincent. Later, we find out her name is Electra Ovirowa.

Lee makes a message appear on all computers with a riddle. Ed and Ein use Lee’s hat to track him down to a particular neighborhood. At the first building, Ed poses as a trick or treater and the man who answers the door shoots at her with a shotgun because Halloween isn’t until tomorrow! At the second door, a man dressed in a nightie flirts with Ed thinking her an underaged boy, then gets violent when he finds out she’s a girl! Yikes. Cowboy Bebop’s portrayal of gay characters certainly hasn’t aged well.

Ed finally finds Lee and sends Faye the address. She promises to wait for her, but gets distracted by trick or treaters (who are presumably a day early) and rushes after them shouting about candy.

Meanwhile, Lee meets with Vincent. Vincent shoots a marble full of nano machines and Lee is infected. Faye finds Lee just as he’s dying. Now she’s infected as well. She shoots Vincent in the hand. He licks the blood and kisses her. Creepy.

Cherious Medical finds Vincent. Spike is listening in to their communications, but Electra finds Spike’s tracker and breaks it. Spike’s able to catch up to Vincent on the monorail. They have a gun fight and bystanders are killed.

Vincent shoots Electra and Spike. He then throws Spike out the window. Electra points a gun at Vincent. He pulls out a grenade and blows up the train. People on the train are infected and get sick, but Electra is immune.

Spike has a dream in which Jet tells him Vincent was dead from the beginning, just like Spike. (There were hints in the original series that Spike may be immortal.) Spike is then awakened by the Native American shaman who I don’t think was named in the series. (His name is listed as Laughing Bull in the subtitles.) He says Spike didn’t die because it wasn’t his time. While the depiction of the Native American shaman is a stereotype, I do like that we get a call back to another one of the recurring characters on the show.

Electra is suspended for disobeying orders. She has a coworker analyze her blood.

Ed hacks the medical company and finds Mendelo-al-Hedia developed the nano machines for the military. Since these are forbidden, they have to keep it secret.

Faye wakes up. Vincent has tied her up. (In the series, getting tied up all the time was kind of Faye’s main character trait.) She’s still alive despite being infected because Vincent gave her his blood.

Spike returns to Morocco Street. Rashid is actually Dr. Mendelo. The nano machines kill the brain then disintegrate into protein making it untraceable. Vincent was a test subject injected with a counter nano machine vaccine. Dr. Mendelo was able to delete the vaccine, but not the nano. He hoped the military wouldn’t use it since it would be suicide. Dr. Mendelo turns Spike over to Cherious Medical. (I guess they don’t want to eliminate Dr. Mendelo anymore.)

Vincent was the only test subject to survive but he lost his memory. He sees butterflies everywhere, a symptom of the nano machines reaching the brain. He thinks he might already be dead and this world is a dream.

Electra has the vaccine in her blood due to once being close to Vincent. The head of Cherious Medical, only referred to as The Colonel, locks up Electra and Spike as part of the coverup. Jet thinks Spike and Faye have abandoned him.

Vincent cuts off Faye’s shirt with his knife and is about to sexually assault her when he’s interrupted by his henchman telling him police are here. His henchman also wants the rest of the money promised to him. Vincent kills the henchmen and leaves Faye behind. She’s able to use the knife he left in his henchmen’s chest to cut the ropes tying her up.

Spike and Electra break out of their jail cells and take the vaccine Cherious developed from her blood with them.

Bob tells Jet that Vincent is going to release the nano machines into the water supply. The ISSP head there and get into an argument with the army about who’s in charge, but the whole thing’s a distraction. Vincent is actually going to attack the Halloween parade.

Spike heads out in his zipplane to stop him, but the army fires on him for some reason. (The real reason is so we can see a cool spaceship fight, but they could have at least had the army say he was in a restricted area or something.) Spike flies underneath a road with the other planes chasing him, a scene somewhat reminiscent of the Death Star scene in Star Wars.

Jet gets airplanes to spray vaccine on everyone. The only planes available are antiques. Several crash. The three old men pilot one. (This is reminiscent of an episode of the series which featured the space shuttle Columbia.) Faye orders weather control to make it rain at gunpoint because the rain spreads the vaccine faster than the nano machines.

Spike realizes Vincent is at the top of a tower. They fight again. Vincent releases the nano machines and Spike starts seeing butterflies, but gets cured by the vaccine in the air. Vincent is about to shoot Spike, but Electra shows up and shoots Vincent. Vincent doesn’t shoot her back, finally remembering she’s the one he used to love. (Since Vincent is dead, Spike presumably doesn’t get the bounty, which is par for the course.)

Cowboy Bebop The Movie certainly delivers both comedy and action. It was nice getting to spend more time with the familiar characters and the animation looks great, mimicking live action cameras throughout.

It’s not completely clear why Vincent wants to kill everybody. He seems to think he’s already dead, living in purgatory, and needs to kill everybody in order to get to heaven, but this doesn’t make sense. Basically, he wants to kill everyone because he’s crazy, which is lazy writing. I also don’t understand why getting shot kills him, but being blown up twice doesn’t. It also bugs me that Cherious Medical gets away with all the bad stuff they did. There’s no mention of anyone at the company getting in trouble for anything.

Cowboy Bebop often has surprise twists, but except for Rashid turning out to be Dr. Mendelo, there aren’t really any in the movie. I guess the hazardous material turning out to be nano machines instead of a virus counts as a twist, but the plot wouldn’t be substantially different if it had been a virus.

Some scenes felt like padding. Lee’s riddle could have been left out without affecting the plot. The army arguing with ISSP about who’s in charge added nothing. I didn’t even mention a scene of Vincent killing a guard in my recap because it didn’t add anything either. In comparison with the episodes which were designed to be mini-movies, the movie itself felt overlong.

It’s unfortunate Faye gets tied up yet again. The movie goes further than the series by having her be threatened with sexual assault as well. The gay man flirting with Ed certainly doesn’t hold up either.

It does feel in keeping with the series in many ways. They go after a bounty because they need money for food, but end up not getting paid. Lots of cool fight scenes and humor. The overall plot was also similar to an episode of the show in which a soldier gets experimented on. I didn’t like it as much as the series, though.