While Korea and Japan have both established themselves as leading horror contenders in the last two decades, the science fiction realm of cinema sometimes gets lost. Face it, it’s risky, especially if you have a low budget. Effects, the sets, and acting can all suffer, while if you have a big budget and blow it in the story department, which is more common than not, your movie is either forgotten or written off rather poorly. That’s why it is nice to see a science fiction film come along that works with a large budget while paying attention to all the details. With subtle human nuances, symbolic folklore and a very believable story portrayed convincingly by its cast, NATURAL CITY delivers what can safely be stated as South Korea’s answer to the genre.
Mixing a very emotional storyline that is reminiscent of BLADE RUNNER with MATRIX-like action, Byung-Cheon Min’s epic tale comes across as derivative yet refreshing. R, played extremely well by Ji-tae Yu (OLDBOY, HORROR GAME MOVIE), is a police officer specifically assigned in destroying renegade androids in the year 2080. Unfortunately, he’s falling apart. His love interest just so happens to be an exotic dancing android that only has a few days left until she expires. Meanwhile, the rebellion has learned to infiltrate databases and scientific labs in an effort to find a way to create longevity. With the aid of an outlawed scientist, R funds experiments on his love, Ria (Rin Seo), by selling A.I. chips stolen from injured and destroyed cyborgs on the job while his long time friend and boss Noma (Chan Yoon) sort of looks the other way. When the upper management catches wind of R’s activities, Noma is forced to deal with the situation. But at what cost, as the cyborg revolution rises while the mad genius R has hired has plans of his own? Caught between world android domination and friendship, and lost love and human life, both R and Noma have to come to terms before their world as they know it comes to an end.
That’s the basic storyline minus some excellent and unexpected twists, but what really captures the viewer is the real human emotion by the entire cast. It’s subtle, especially coming from some of the android characters. It builds and what becomes intolerably heart wrenching is when Ria is first coming to terms with her deletion date and enforces her love towards R by telling him that he takes up most of her memory chip and thus is very important to her. The plot and setting is very bleak at times but the love and humor, even from minor supporting roles, comes across as genuine. Not mentioned in this review as of yet is a fourth main character, Cyon (Jae-un Lee), a ghetto prostitute in which R wants to insert Ria’s memory into in order for her to live on. His reasoning has nothing to do with her sexual prowess. Rather, he believes that since she sells her body already, he would be able to give her a much better life, despite the fact she wouldn’t know it after the procedure. What he discovers in the long run is quite different (no, there’s no stupid sappy Hollywood ending, thank God).
Fear not, action fans, because while the main point is the human condition, the battle between men and machine is extremely violent and gory. Heads get riddled with bullets, limbs are torn off and, by the end, it looks like several characters have showered in blood. Director Byung-Cheon Min’s use of close up visuals and tight editing during key fight scenes are extremely effective. Unfortunately, to shake things up, certain scenes go into slow motion ala THE MATRIX, with the irony being that THE MATRIX derived most of its action style from Asian cinema. Meanwhile, the like moments in NATURAL CITY feel more like a U.S. counterpart rather than coming from its own origins. This is a minor complaint when looking at the whole, but I feel it is still necessary to point out due to the fact that this particular style has been so done to death, it almost gets irritating now.
Included with Tartan’s release are several extras, including an excellent interview with director Byung-Cheon Min where he discusses the true meaning behind the title of NATURAL CITY. While several moments are touched on during the movie itself, his theme is only hinted at, keeping it more personal than even the story lets on. However, if you are curious, definitely do not watch the rest of the extras until you’ve watched the movie first as major, and I mean major, spoilers are contained all throughout. The interview itself is contained during the making of featurette, while other cast interviews from three of the main leads is separate. Also included are several deletes scenes, with two being so good that I have to wonder why they were removed in the first place. Make sure and check them out. Rounding out the extras is the original theatrical trailer and several other trailers for other Tartan releases from their Extreme line. On a final note about the extras, for most of you who have read my reviews, you probably already know my snide reaction to fluffy featurettes, especially on blockbuster releases. And while some of that is here as well and to be expected, it was also very nice to see a lot of genuine earnestness and sincerity about their work involved in this long project (the movie took four years from preproduction to the first screening).
Overall, this might not seem your normal Tartan Asia Extreme title, which usually contains more horrific and supernatural elements to revenge filled violent thematic masterpieces such as OLD BOY, but it is a welcomed edition to their collection of fast growing titles. I, for one, highly recommend NATURAL CITY to genre fans.