Renaissance Review (Sunday Business Post)

Renaissance
Director Christian Volckman
Review: Jonathan McCrea

The year is 2074, the location Paris. Illona (Romola Garai), a young employee of multinational corporation Avalon has been kidnapped in broad daylight and the company yells blue murder demanding an immediate response. The police chief assigns her best officer to the case, the unconventional Captain Karas (Daniel Craig, Layer Cake). Breaking the rules like every good cop should, Karas becomes involved with the victim’s sister Bislane (Catherine McCormack, Spy Game) and together they unravel the mysterious disappearance. Of course, it’s not long before the whodunnit compass is pointing straight at the big-wigs at Avalon.
Visually, Renaissance is a beautiful film. While many will draw comparisons between it and Robert Rodriguez’ Sin City for it’s style, the look of this animated film is actually created quite differently. Where the latter used real actors over a green screen laid onto a CGI background, in Renaissance (as in Linklater’s interminably pretentious Waking Life) director Christian Volckman uses motion capture of actors which is later drawn upon. This method allowed the director to run free around his created environment, dipping the camera in and out of buildings yet retaining the realistic motion of it’s characters.
Unfortunately, that’s where the innovation stops. Volckman’s vision of the future is largely derivitave, borrowing from practically every science fiction work from Blade Runner to the Jetsons. Our hero Karas is the garden-variety silent broody cop who just can’t play by the book. Of course he has a desk-banging superior, a backstreet informer and it’s all a bit Dirty Harry circa 1971. The final cliché comes in the form of Jonathan Pryce’s smug Paul Dellenbach, head of Avalon, whose seeming co-operation with the authorities is all just a little too suspicious.
The vocal chords of Daniel Craig et al. really don’t go beyond warm-up exercises as the mood is very film noir complimenting the monochrome of the picture. Still, every once in a while a misjudged line hits the floor like a dropped hammer. ‘Why do you live your life?’ a melodramatic Bislane begs of Caras, coaxing on a backstory which predictably reveals the rugged misanthrope’s checquered past.
With so many worn mechanisms this descendant of Orwell’s 1984 feels more like it’s come out of the past than the future, but the effervescent art direction and pretty fight scenes just about make it worth a look on the silver screen.

** 2 stars