Natural City (R1 DVD Tartan Asia Extreme) Review

In the future, cyborgs can feel, love, and hate…but all of them have an expiration date. Combat cyborgs that are refusing to die and be recycled launch an attack against Neucom and destroy those who get in the way. In the middle of this battle, some sort of conspiracy starts to unveil behind the curtains.

Natural City has so many possibilities to be a great film. The filmmakers’ attempt at making Bladerunner of Korea was courageous and it has the world of its own, visually stunning. Yet the film failed their attempts to make its mark on the genre and failed to deliver the goods.

The world the filmmakers created is memorable but not the characters. That is a major problem with the film. Relationships of main characters lead to a bit of mystery. R is a sympathetic guy but the way he is portrayed feels very unsympathetic. He is torn between love and job but he doesn’t show much of emotion. He is almost emotionless and his motivations for reincarnating the life of cyborg are never really explored while cyborgs has functional difficulties (emotion, I should say) within herself. It really is hard to like R, feel for him, sympathy for him and care about his journey. film’s pacing is rather slow and it becomes sometimes draggy and tedious to follow the plot. Sometimes the action sequence is very cool and feels like everything is fast paced, but then everything is drowned out afterward. But the film does do justice to a few things. The CGI is done very flawlessly. Its post-apocalyptic world feels very moody and works out pretty well with matching the content of the film.

I really hate to say it but Natural City isn’t a good film. I really wanted to like it. I was waiting for the moment it would transport me into the film. It never happened. It does have great style, but the film takes on style more than substance and that is the problem.

DVD
Video: Presented in anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio of 2.35:1, and this transfer of the film is pretty vivid. Color saturation is fantastic and well delineated. The dark scenes contain nice shadow delineation, and contrast even though sometimes grain is visible, I think it’s because the film stock they filmed with.

Audio: This disc supports Korean Dolby Digital 5.1, and DTS tracks with optional English subtitles. Only viewed with DD5.1 track for this review. Its mix is excellent. Dialogue is very clear and centered. It generated good response throughout the entire film, especially the rear channels do a great job of highlighting big action moments.

Special Features

The story of Natural City: Making of featurette
Deleted scenes
Cast interviews
Original Theatrical Trailer