Customer Reviews

Natural City (Korean Blade Runner)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Spending many years of my career in Asia, my friends turn me on to many new culinary delights, exotic locales and in this case unique movies.

Set in the Korea of the future Natural City is about a Special Operations type super-cop whose job is to work in a highly trained unit to hunt down cyber-terrorists and the like. This particular cop is in love with a android "stripper/callgirl" whose life span is about up. He breaks the law he has sworn to protect to find the bits and pieces required to keep his "girlfriend" from dying.

The setting is very similar to Blade Runner with much more emotional drama that is common with Korean films. All in all I would give it 4 of 5 stars. It provides a similar view into what our future could be like 50 years down the road.

Right off the top, this film loses a star for putting Doo-hong Jung in the flick and totally underutilizing him. The guy is the king of Korean martial arts flicks and he gets relegated to a few, sparse action sequences.
As for the film itself, it's not bad. For those people who feel that "Blade Runner" is the end-all, be-all of human/cyborg love and that no other film should ever be done that deals with that subject: stay away from this film. While it does deal with the same basic premise, it certainly sets itself apart from "Blade Runner". Sure, it has that very cyber-punk futuristic feel, but the story almost would pick up where BR left off. We find our main character in the last few days of his cyborg love's life and what he's doing to try and save her. But we also find the familiar Asian themes of brotherhood and love vs. loyalty/duty, self-interest vs. greater good, whereas in BR the main theme was "what is life?" and that was about it. So NC tends to be a bit more complex (but I still like BR far more).

The visuals are well done and the acting is pretty solid. It does have a very stylized visual approach that will remind some of "The Matrix". The story was just play. It seemed to wander a bit here and there and the main character's actions often seemed to contradict what the whole movie was about (read: he sure has a funny way of showing affection). Maybe there's something deeper, some underlying motivation that I missed, but I thought he just came across like a d-bag to his woman. And that runs counter to the stated purpose of the whole thing.

Basically, it's a decent movie that could have been better. The action feels restrained and the story tends to try and make itself deeper than it actually is. Performances and visuals are overall solid. Sci-fi fans should enjoy this one. Action fans will feel cheated by seeing talented martial artists going to waste. I enjoyed it, and maybe I'll watch it again someday...just not anytime soon.

bought this on a whim and did not regret it. lots of action and special effects to back it up. great plot, great acting, great sound track. if you like blade runner, you'll love this film.

Like another reviewer, I bought this movie on a whim, and thought it was really good. The only similarity to Blade Runner that it has for me are the human like robots, and that wasn't even a really new concept for Blade Runner. I also thought the soundtrack was really good, and enjoy the singers on it, but since I can't read Korean, I don't know who is doing the singing. Can anyone help me out here?

The disc and production is of fine quality. But the movie wasn't. Technically excellent, yet thoroughly derivative of [insert any sci-fi film name here.] Quite the opposite of the original Blade Runner DVD, a lousy disc and great movie... (Criterion where are you?!)

If you love Blade Runner, you will likely be disappointed. Not a soul or story of interest can be found here. If any old sci-fi flick is your bag, by all means enjoy!

beautiful movie with hot asian chicks,plenty of action.a must own for sci-fi fans.movie is so good that it will release a us version dvd in feb.28 2006.