Movie Review : Natural City

Natural City (2.7 of 5)…DVD
You know your film industry has made it when you throw a record amount of money at a project-and it is still sub-par. Korea-s Natural City uses top notch special effects, cinematography and premise, then fails in the execution. The story is basically-Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep II- and the cinematography gives Ridley Scott a run for his money. But the lackluster acting and action scenes bog the film down to an overblown version of-Last action Hero-. The story follows a future cop who wants to keep his expiring android alive longer. And finds a renegade neurosurgeon to implant the robots code into live person. The cop steal parts from slain renegade androids, he is supposed to destroy, to pay for the procedure. As it turns out the renegade neurosurgeon is not what he claims to be. And a fight with his superiors as well as unstoppable rouge battle droids commences. The director tries to make you care about the characters, but fails miserably. The forced emotions are laughable and expressionless actors make everybody seem like androids not just the ones who are supposed to be. The real failure comes in the action scenes. While you can see hints of genius in the use of Slo-motion and wirework, it is shot so close and edited so quickly you can-t see anything. The great panoramic of special effects and quiet character scenes are destroyed with close action scenes with no establishing shots. It had potential-. but someone should have stepped up and re-shot about half of it-. and made a true international hit.