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Gunsmith Cats: Bulletproof!
by Nathan G. Johnson  
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synopsis
Episode 1- Neutral Zone

Expert gunsmith Rally Vincent (slender, curvy, all-business brunette packin' heat) and her maniac side-kick Minnie May Hopkins (short, cute, dizzy blonde explosives nut) are happily running a gun shop and a bounty hunting operation in Chicago, when pony-tailed and hunky ATF Agent Bill Collins saunters into their lives. With a little coercion, Bill leads the Gunsmith Cats on a bullet-riddled mission to bust a ring of gunrunners by setting up a sting on smuggling under-boss Jonathan Washington.

Episode 2- Swing High

With Jonathan Washington in the hands of the ATF, it looks like the gun-bust mission is nearly complete - until "The Bloody Pierce," a Russian hitwoman in a bulletproof coat, shows up and starts wiping out evidence. With a rumored mole in the ATF and good guys getting killed left and right, Bill and the Gunsmith Cats are forced to work underground. Working off of a tip they got from Washington, the Cats locate one of the gunrunners' arms storage facilities, but things take a turn for the worse when the guards spot them. Bloody Pierce captures Minnie May and Rally has to race in reckless pursuit to rescue her best friend from being carved up by the sinister Russian.

Episode 3- High Speed Edge

The good news is, Bill figures out the house where the ATF mole is. The bad news is, when he gets there, the mole is dead and the house is rigged to blow up. Meanwhile the unsuspecting Gunsmith Cats are on their way to receive a civic award from Senator Haints - where the Bloody Pierce is waiting for them, thirsty for revenge. Can Bill and the Gunsmith Cats figure out who's really behind the gun running operation before the Bloody Pierce kills them all?

review
As any TV addict will tell you, there's nothing wrong with watching a cavalcade of hackneyed two-dimensional charicatures march through a series of worn-out cliches, so long as the show contains enough elements that appeal to your taste. Perhaps novel stories and compelling characters are of no interest to you. They are clearly of little interest to the "Gunsmith Cats'" creators, who dutifully use story as a necessary tool with which to string together sharp, popping, shooting-chasing action sequences, and to indulge their passion for girls in panties with guns.

One DVD "behind the scenes" feature relates, in a long yawn, the producers' early business trips to Chicago, where they did thorough location scouting, checked out hot cars, and, of course, spent hours at the shooting ranges "working hard." Corresponding results of this research in "Gunsmith Cats" do impress. The guns and the cars in the show are lovingly drawn in delicate detail. In fact, they sometimes stand out as the most detailed things onscreen, including the characters in and around them. The rich city renderings give a consistent, but layered look to the settings that might have really come to life - if only there were anyone interesting in them.

Equal care surfaces in the flashy action, replete with death defying acrobatics, sharp shooting gunplay, quirky camera angles, and action movie humor. Rally puts bullets in the baddies in quick, sure succession; Minnie May rains down grenades in alarming showers; and they both look good in their underwear. All in all, though sometimes a little stiff, the animation is the strongest leg propping up this flat facade of a show.

No effort goes to explain who any of the characters really are, where they came from, or where they're hoping to go. There is no evidence that they're going anywhere; they're the same people at the end of the show as at the beginning, only some are dead and some in jail. They are scripted by the numbers: Bill is the rogue cop with the heart of gold. His boss, Chief Black, is gruff, yells a lot, and at the appropriate moment suspends Bill for being such a rogue cop. Natasha "The Bloody Pierce" Radinov is the cold-blooded Russian assassin who just loves to kill people in exchange for drugs. The laundry list goes on, culminating in Rally and Minnie May, our reluctant heroines: hot, deadly, full of quips and otherwise undefined.

To sum up, like I said, Gunsmith Cats is no worse than a lot of things on TV. The tag line goes like this: "Stave off a few hours of creaking boredom with the machismo of the Gunsmith Cats! 'Gunsmith' Cats shoots for mediocrity and hits - Bulls-eye!!!"



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