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51 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful, haunting, heartbreaking SF masterpiece, 22 Aug 2005
A shame that many people into "intelligent" SF are going to pass up on this movie thanks to the odd mediocre review and a fear it might just be another shoot-the-robots martial arts flick. But take a risk -- this is an intense, slow burning and mesmerising story set in a visually extraordinary Korea 75 years in the future.Comparisons with "Blade Runner" are inevitable, if slightly misleading: both films are based on the works of Philip K Dick, as opposed to, say, Isaac Azimov. If you want a no-brainer shoot-em-up with androids and car chases, go for "I Robot". This movie takes the artificial intelligence question many steps further on, and like "Blade Runner" poses painful questions about the nature of self, memory, and our ability to have "human" emotions. If you must make direct comparisons with "Blade Runner", consider that the earlier film introduced a set of ideas and principles (androids with emotions and limited life-spans, for example) that an audience for "Natural City" can take as granted and which therefore the film makers can elaborate upon. It's a post-apocalypse future city. "R" is a detective who is deeply in love with an android called Ria, with whom he has had a year long relationship. But Ria only has days to live before her AI chip fails and she dies. Faced with this loss of the woman he loves, R will attempt anything, even if it means losing his job and his own morality. It's possible to place Ria's AI chip in the brain of a compatible human -- and such a human exists, the prostitute Cyan. Of course, Cyan ceases to exist as a consequence. Can R "kill" Cyan to keep Ria alive? Though we're in deep SF territory here, the film's resonances are familiar to anyone faced with the decline and death of a loved one through a terminal or wasting disease. R knows that Ria is about to die, and her mind is beginning to unravel, losing motor functions and even her most precious things, her memories of her love with R. The heart of the movie is R's knowledge of this loss, and we're witness to the final, heartbreaking moments between these two people (and yes, Ria is a person) who are in love but about to lose each other. The rest of the movie -- about a renegade android who has also realised his AI chip can be placed in Cyan's brain -- is almost irrelevant and seems there only to add occasional action sequences. If anything, the tragic love between R and Ria is understated. The few brief deleted scenes on the DVD add slightly more resonance to their relationship, and their omission is baffling. That aside, this is a dazzling, beautifully realised and downbeat SF story, a study of love and identity set against an impossibly luxurious future landscape -- easily the best future city graphics I've ever seen -- and one whose inevitable heartbreak will leave you sobbing. Highly recommended and essential viewing for all lovers of good SF.
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