Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

If I weren't writing a review of Renaissance right now, I probably wouldn't remember it tomorrow. I realize that a lot of care went into the animation (or is it rotoscoping?) of this movie that blends film-noir and sci-fi into a slick story about a company in the future that can provide ageless beauty, and the one guy around played by Daniel Craig who thinks something is not right. Then there's a kidnapping, twisted doings in the underworld, befuddled if good-intentioned cops, and other things like genetic research, car chases, fights, and so on. I'm not sure what it is that makes the movie so forgettable as it should be up my alley (that is, re: Philip K. Dick fan, it's that kind of material if two or three times removed by generations). And I also like this rotoscope style animation... that is when it's done right. When watching it it's like there is rarely any space for another hue in the animation. Black and white could be fine, but what about depth and texture? Most of the scenes are either in black-black or white-white, very few grays I could really spot, and while it would be effective for a short film stretched over a feature length narrative it becomes irksome. Coupling that with a story that gets overwhelmed by its style, and some mostly bland voice-work (yes I'm looking at you Daniel Craig), and it becomes kind of dull. And it shouldn't be. It's like watching the slick cut-scenes from a new X-Box game or something. If that's your bag, then go for it. But the story itself is too weak to support the visuals.

For all its visual delights, how much better Renaissance would have been in live action. The animation is fantastic in the big picture, yes, but the characters are cold and hollow, much like the story and the style of this film. With real actors, perhaps the world of the film would not have felt so lifeless. There is much to admire here, but at the end I found that all I could do was admire. I did not enjoy the movie that much, and it clarifies something that I did not see before: that the visual elements can be the defining positive aspect of a film, but without a good story and strong characters, it can all be for nothing. I will not go so far as to say that this movie comes to nothing, but sometimes it comes dangerously close. I love Dark sci-fi thrillers. Blade Runner and Dark City are two films I thought were wonderful. But Blade Runner had its tragic villain and Dark City had its thought-provoking story arc. Renaissance has shadow and light, but little else. I wish I could have liked this movie more, but the weak story and the empty characters stood in the way of that. The Renaissance was a historical and artistic burst of color and life. How ironic, then, that one of the most bleak and lifeless movies I've seen this year takes its title from the Renaissance.

Good grief, what are the Europeans at here? Renaissance is a sort of sprawling Chinatown mystery packed with elements of noir crossed with Ridley Scott's Blade Runner in the sense the makers have tried to be clever or just different to everyone else and have set it in the future, thus adding a science fiction ingredient. I read that the film was jointly produced between Britain, France and Luxembourg but I'm sure there's more to that than the mere fact the cast is British and the setting is Paris – I'm not sure where Luxembourg figure into the equation though.I guess the reason this drew so much attention and turned so many heads was because of its animation. The animation isn't used for the sake of being post-modern, it is used on an artistic merit in order to recreate Paris, but Paris circa the year 2054. To shoot it in live action and include all the necessary special effects in order to create a world so far into the future would require money that the French, British and respectively, the Luxembourgian film industries do not have. The film is Richard Linklater's 2001 documentary-come-film Waking Life crossed with the more brutal, more out and out fictitious Sin City with its uncanny animation and attention to character movement, whilst recreating a world unbeknownst to us but seemingly normal amongst all the decay to its inhabitants.However, the film itself is something a little less spectacular when you peel away the visuals and the overall look. Is this the French partly trying to take back the label of 'Film Noir'? What made Film Noir famous throughout the classical era of Hollywood is exactly the sort of content Renaissance use for this picture. Like its source of inspiration, Renaissance does deliver on the basic level of noir; it is gloomy and relatively downbeat with questions raised and moral boundaries sort of crossed by people we should expect better from. The hero, or anti-hero as he sort of becomes, is Barthélémy Karas (Craig); a Parisian policeman hunting for Ilona Tasuiev (Garai) who has been kidnapped whilst working on something pretty big for shady company 'Avalon'. Along with this, Paul Dellenbach's goons led by Dellenbach (Pryce) himself have their own agenda for her.Everything is in Renaissance, from the black and white with flashes of colour right down to the moody detective that works on both sides of the law and who comes complete with a chequered past. Does it all work? Yes, it does but only to a degree. The focus here is on Craig's character as he gets more and more involved in a shady and shifty world whilst trying to uncover the truth. He balances macho and the scenes in which he has to stick a gun in someone's face with the calmer, more involving scenes of detective work and thinking things through. But I wish I could say it was more interesting than it was on the whole.Paris as a location feels raised distinctly higher than usual for some reason. There is a lot of glass in the city. There are massive glass floors in which pedestrians are able to see what's happening on the roads beneath them; there is a large inclusion of mirrors and windows with the windows in Dellenbach's office and what's outside them feeling somewhat emphasised, whether this is the production company showing off what they can do or whether it means something more is entirely subjective. Hell, even the cells designed to hold people are transparent. I think the inclusion of all this is some sort of reference to Karas and his should-be ability to 'see through' what's around him, ie; the organisation itself and the clues he finds.You get a pleasant sort of feeling when you watch Renaissance, like when you saw Chinatown for the first time. You will want to figure it all out but some scenes might elude you first time round. Eventually, Karas will be acting on his own impulses and he'll have a trusty female ally as they blur the moral boundaries. Paris as a location is full of Brits, Yanks and Russians with an alarming amount of French people not on show – maybe they're all the pedestrians we don't get to hear speak as car chases or whatever unfold around them.Additionally to the meek comment the film may be making about Paris' multicultural status, the statement on surveillance is even hollower. Everyone can see practically anything in the city with CCTV cameras posted everywhere, even one of the more dramatic scenes in a location too obscure for technology is seen by Dellenbach whilst in the comfort of his own office. Renaissance isn't a bad film but what it has in quality of animation and meekly involving plot it lacks in overall interest and feeling. It's an impressive exercise in combining animation with narrative but it should've been better overall.

2054. Paris is an Escher drawing with people and vehicles scurrying along at multiple levels in an obvious homage to Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Paris is both ultramodern and crumbling into decay. And in the blink between surveillance sweeps, a pretty young medical researcher is kidnapped just after leaving her sister in a seedy nightclub. A tough police captain investigates. Shown in stark black and white, with the gloomy corridors, shadowy alleys and single source lighting characteristic of the most hard-boiled of film noir, comparisons to Sin City are inevitable. But the story owes more to Masamune Shirow and William Gibson than to Frank Miller, as high tech surveillance, near-invisible stealth suits and ruthless super-corporations are as much a part of the landscape as guns and cars. The film never quite generates the doom-laden atmosphere of Gibson's cyberpunk vision, with its tech-heavy marginal characters clashing with industrial types from corporations that all seem to have their own Ministry of Fear, but the viewer definitely gets the sense that future Paris is no Utopia and future science is less than benevolent. And as the police procedural plot line unfolds we are taken into the darker recesses of individual ambition beneath the shiny veneer of Avalon corporation's cultivated PR image. The motion capture process used here produces a look somewhere between B&W comic books and next generation rotoscoping, and is either captivating or intrusive depending on your tastes. Nevertheless, a great visual sense is on display here, and future Paris is filled in down to the tiny details giving the picture a unique look which is in turns both spartan and baroque. Worth a look.