Brad Bird’s Ray Gunn has been over 30 years in the making. It’s a film he’s wanted to make since before 1999’s The Iron Giant. Audiences are likely to walk in with lofty expectations because of that. Clearly, Bird is very passionate about this story. However, the film itself ultimately doesn’t feel as special as that passion suggests. Ray Gunn is a solid animated adventure, but it lacks the feeling of personal investment you might expect from a project a filmmaker has spent decades trying to bring to the big screen. What makes Ray Gunn stand out from the myriad of animated films is that it’s essentially an animated film noir, which is a genre hybrid we seldom see. However, that combination also comes with some drawbacks, because anyone who’s seen at least one classic film noir from the 1940s will be able to recognize exactly where Ray Gunn is headed.