I've always been a fan of science fiction. The theme of cyborgs especially captures my attention, alongside the arguments for and against their incorporation into society, coupled with the philosophical discussion on whether they can potentially acquire human feelings. Natural City, with its beautiful landscape, detailed effects and impressive vision grabbed my attention, however, the aforementioned ideas above appear fleetingly in a film where they are essentially paramount.R (Ji-tae Yu) is a member of the police force of 2080; a team of elite troopers, who keep the fragile peace in a post-apocalyptic society, where humans and cyborgs live awkwardly beside each other. Once a revered officer, R has been forced to commit illegalities in order to keep his beautiful cyborg girlfriend, Ria (Rin Seo) alive, pitifully fighting her short life span, that will inevitably consume her. His actions have turned him against his best friend, and fellow officer, Noma (Chang Yun), who tries desperately to keep R out of trouble.When R is told by the brilliant, but deranged Cyborg specialist, Dr Zero (Jung Eun-Pyo), that Cyon (Jae-un Lee), a beautiful, young working girl, has all the ingredients he needs to keep Ria indefinitely alive, R will stop at nothing to find her. Unfortunately, rogue combat cyborg Cypher (Doo-hong Jung) also requires Cyon to increase his life expectancy, culminating in a violent battle for preservation.As a lead character, R is difficult to sympathize with. Often aggressive and bitter, the only times he is shown to be compassionate, is in the company of Ria, whose screen time is minimal in contrast with the other characters, despite the pivotal part she plays. Characterization in general is sparse across the narrative, with little back-story, most characters having a very narrow agenda. Ria on the other hand, says several key phrases over the course of the feature that have considerable impact, however, their importance is undermined by the focus on the action-oriented story-line.Moments of beautiful tenderness, accentuated by the touching musical score, are equally short-lived, though are more memorable than the fight scenes. These are considerably violent, containing a combination of gun battles and martial arts, and though occasionally impressive, these are also handled by using slow motion and quick shots, that do not always result in appealingly fluid moments.Though Natural City is a film thematically focused around relationships, I couldn't help but notice the distance between the characters, even in scenes when they were barely an inch from each other. Feelings of hopelessness, and the debate on mortality gnaw at you from every angle, until even the sweetest parts of the film seem so utterly depressing. Perhaps I'm a romantic, however, I would have liked a deeper, more passionate focus on R and Ria, which offered a unique perspective to the audience, rather than the clichéd plot concerning killer cyborgs.

NATURAL CITY poses an obvious question: wouldn't BLADE RUNNER have been cooler if Deckard was replaced by a squad of futuristic SWAT with ridiculously large guns? It then proceeds to answer that question by dumping most of the philosophy in favour of a slightly-mawkish-but-sweet romance between a cop, whose job it is to hunt down androids, with a dying android. In addition it adds a lot of stylish Asian action sequences as the aforementioned squad hunt down a pack of rogue androids; like in lots of Asian films what happens around the fight - the looks and movements - is just as important as the actions themselves. It is quite blatant in its theft of another movies plot which gives it a certain charm -- it's a sort of remix. The acting is largely posing (although good posing), the production design is simply a more Asian version of the already Asian inspired BLADE RUNNER, the plot is a little plonky and the subplots are positively boring but at least the climax is good fun as the hero and the rogue androids face off, destroying much of the city in the process.

I've just watched this movie.Yes,Blade Runner looms large over it. But it's not a clone. Beyond Hollwood takes the movie to task, because the main character is basically a jerk, and the guy who would normally be the hero plays a secondary role. But that's the beauty of Asian movies, they don't conform to the norm. Anyway if this was a gangster movie, there would be nothing wrong in having a bad guy as the lead character. THe other part the reviewer took the movie to task over was the relation between R and Ria. Ria showed no emotion.Well she was a cyborg R was indifferent to her. Well,yes, I'm prepared to concede that point. Why did R love Ria. Does everything have to be explained? I just accepted that he did. What I didn't like about the movie was the climatic action scene. Sure it was exciting, and well done. But for me, it was too Hollywood. I expect more from Korean movies. I thought the ending was beautiful though.

I'm a huge Blade Runner fan and discovered this movie through a BR site. Although I tried to get into this movie without any biases or preconceptions, it was quite difficult because everything in Natural City screams of Blade Runner. Some of the scenes were so blatantly familiar that it would make me nostalgically smile and even rewind just to see it again. Even the characters that some of us came to love after the Nth watching of Ridley Scott's masterpiece are quite apparent in the story. But don't get me wrong, the fact that Natural City is trying to mimic one of the greatest sci-fi movies in history is not a bad thing at all. In fact, it manages to pull it off quite nicely and delivers a great movie, but unfortunately it is far from being a perfect cyberpunk sci-fi that Blade Runner was. For one, I was sort of disappointed with the music. It's too shallow and a bit too melancholic compared to BR's powerful Vangelis tunes. Scores in Natural City that are mostly composed for piano are not bad, but they're far from being good. Most of the time, you won't even notice the music and I think a lot more emphasis should have been put on this since one of the lesson's from Blade Runner was that sound track plays an extremely important role in mood setting and overall effect on the movie. Also because this is an Asian movie, I had trouble relating to the emotional aspects of it. Characters, at least female characters, were just too shallow for my tastes. There was no Rachel to speak of and the girl who sort of played her was constantly sitting in the corner with a blank expression on her face. Although it's understandable in the context of the storyline, I think they could have done better than that. It does in the end make you concentrate more on the male protagonist, but I think that makes the female actors kind of ignorable, which I think is not right. Romance is the center of the story, so having a strong female role is quite crucial. But all these disappointment are really quite minor. I have to stress that Natural City is a really interesting film and a strong contender amongst Sci-Fi masterpieces. I'm sure it will have more fame in near future and will probably become a cult like so many other great under-appreciated sci-fi movies did.This is definitely a must see for anyone who's interested in sci-fi, but is also a good action flick to satisfy an average Joe. The story might be a bit complicated for a person that has never seen this type of movies before, but visuals are pretty enough to keep anyone on watching.9/10 (10 for being a great sci fi, -1 for somewhat generic music)