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Natural City
Reviewed by Timothy Milton
R likes this music.
R likes the rain.
R likes smoking.
R takes up the biggest part of my memory.
So
what would you do for love? Would you beg, sell yourself, sell someone
else, kill? Now what would you do for love if the object of that
love was a car, or a toaster, or a synthetic human? Set in a vaguely
dystopian setting akin to Blade Runner, Natural City is Korea’s
futuristic action movie that asks the question “What will
you do for love?”
The setting of Natural City (don’t ask me why that is the title) is a sprawling Megapolis with a blend of stark urbanity and vapid commercialism. Everyone in this future speaks Korean but all the signage and ads are in a Japanese/English blend. (I guess we know who won the world corporate wars.)
As
we follow the main character “R” it doesn’t take
long to see he is a reprehensible person who has little in the way
of morality guiding his actions. He is an asshole. “R”
is a cop -- more specifically, he is a rogue cyborg hunter. Because
in the future the world has a problem with crazy cyborg soldiers.
All cyborgs have a built-in expiry date where their chip shuts down
and, as this due date nears, the borgs seem to go a little crazy.
Anyway “R” uses his position to steal the chips out
of the skulls of cyborgs to sell on the black market. This means
he is always under the watchful eye of his superior officer, who
suspects him of being a criminal but doesn’t want to prove
it because “R” is the best he has.
As
the tale progresses, we see “R” go to an upscale strip
club to see his girlfriend Ria. Ria is a pleasure cyborg. Now we
see why “R” wants and needs money--he wants to save
Ria. After much drunken arguing “R” buys Ria and takers
her home because “R’ has a plan to save Ria by putting
her consciousness into the body of a human. Not just any human,
only one who fits the right biological make up.
All the time “R” and Ria are together he is plagued by messages from her manufacturer reminding him she is going to die soon.
Ria is expiring in 1 day.
If malfunction begins, discard it
to the scrap yard immediately.
All “R” and Ria want to do is escape to Muyoga (an off-world version of Eden) and begin again . . . together.
To save Ria he must kidnap an innocent girl, not get arrested and fight off a crazed super-cyborg-soldier who also wants to transfer his own consciousness into the same innocent girl's body. (OK, there is a twist but I’m not gonna tell ya, you have to watch it to find out.)
So once again, what would you do for love? What makes it real? Can you love a creation as must as a real person or is “R” deluded? “R” makes his choice and he fights for it even when all hope seems lost and that’s what makes him the most unlikable, reprehensible hero I have seen in a long time.
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