Natural City wears its Blade Runner inspiration on its sleeve. Both are future set sci fi films with leads whose job's involve tracking down cyborgs who have gone off track. Both feature- the cop in love with a cyborg, a menacing, disturbed cyborg villain trying to by more time before his short life span is up, dilapidated city settings, eccentric cyborg designers, and even such obvious homage rip-offs as the large advertisement ships that fly over the city spouting promo campaigns for better far away lands.

Natural City's combines the bad guy/good guy dynamic of Blade Runner so that both the cop and the rogue cyborgs are looking to sustain life, the cop for his cyborg mistress, the cyborgs for their own prolonged existence. R (Ji-tae Yoo) is the member of a swat squad that goes after rogue cyborgs. He has a mistress, a cyborg named Ria (Rin Suh), who is nearing the end of her three year life cycle. R's superior and former best friend, Noma (Chang Yoon), worries about his unstable squad member and suspects him of breaking some laws on the side.

Noma is completely right in his suspicions. R is supplying a black market cyborg scientist Dr. Giro with stolen memory chips in return for help in figuring out how to transplant Ria's memories and personality into another living human being who fits the very specific genetic makeup reacquired for the task. They find a genetic match in a fortune teller/prostitute Cyon (Jae-un Lee). Things complicate when a rogue combat cyborg, Cyper is also after Cyon and time is quickly dwindling away for Ria.

One of the cues the makers of Natural City should have taken from Blade Runner is the humanity, the fact that our cops love interest seems human or at least her amount of humanness is surprising to Harrison Ford's character. R's love interest is totally vacant. We know he meets her because she's a dancer at a club, but in terms of backstory we have very little to show that he has any kind of real relationship with her. She just seems to be there as something pretty to look at and go to bed with, no personality, and to make matters worse, she's at a failing state in the film, so she's vacant and increasingly mildly retarded. Likewise, Blade Runner had a sympathetic villain, a non-human who had the all too human desire not to die, not to fade into nothing. In Natural City they give us a cardboard, non-expressive cyborg villain, largely silent until some late act spouting of tripe about deserving to live, which comes off as a pale imitation of Rutger Hauer's speech in Blade Runner's finale.

The unlikeable hero is a tough characterization to pull off. R comes off as a completely unsympathetic guy. First, because of the lame portrayal of his relationship with his doll-like love, they might as well have rewritten the film so that, instead of a cyborg, R is really upset that they no longer make certain model of toaster he likes, so he scours the city for replacement parts to keep his beloved toaster running. In his first big scene, R is shown being so callous in his job that his screw-ups cost the lives of a few men. Does he care? Does he fell guilty? Nope. His quest in the film is basically to take a poor, innocent street girl, full of perk and personality, erase her brain, and replace it with his vacuous love doll. Sure, they try some final act redemption where R comes to Cyon and Noma's rescue by going mano y mano with Cyper, but it is so poorly written it seems like R is only doing so because he got caught and was prevented from saving Ria's consciousness.

It is a shame that Natural City is all style and no substance. Clearly everyone behind the film spent 99% of their time in pre-production designing Matrix rip-off fight scenes, costume design, and heavy amounts of digital work, rather than anything that would resemble a decent script. As bad as the film is, with as many holes in its plot and terrible characterizations, the dazzle of the film's aesthetic kept me mildly interested.

The DVD: Tartan

Picture: Anamorphic Widescreen. Well, it is certainty a very expensive looking film. Nary a frame was not put through the digital wringer and tweaked in some way. Typical of most modern sci fi flicks the color scheme has a lean towards cold blue tints for the more polished sections of the city and some muddy amber tones for the slums. Transferwise, much of this lavish design is hampered by a prevailing softness and evidence of some compression issues. I wouldn't say these problems are very severe, but you definitely get the sense of a an A+ image getting a B grade transfer.

Sound: Korean language DTS or 5.1 Surround with optional English or Spanish subtitles. Really crisp sound design comes to life on both tracks. Good, responsive mix that, as in most genres, really comes alive in the fight scenes. Excellent subtitles, well-timed and free from any grammatical errors.

Extras: Slipcase.--- Original Trailer, plus more Tartan release trailers. --- ‟The Story of Natural City‟ featurette (23:46). Concise and fairly informative look into the making of the film, some standard promo fluff as well as insights into the non-Blade Runner inspirations. ---Deleted Scenes (6:00). A handful of scenes that don't exactly feel like they would have worked but at the very least add a smidgen more character and plot into the muddled film.--- Cast Interviews, Ji-Tae Yoo (5:49), Chang Yoon (7:49), Rin Suh (4:09). Pretty sketchy stuff here, especially disappointing that the film's one good performance (Jae-un Lee) is not included.

Conclusion: I would qualify Natural City as a half-interesting disaster. The film proves that you are really setting yourself up for failure when you ape a widely regarded, classic film, and miss out on everything that made that film work. But, it is still strangely involving, just in a pure sense making a checklist of where they went wrong and marveling at the look of the film. Best reserved as rental for sci fi fans.