Utter fucking brilliance. Review Over. No wait I got more.
How this one slipped under my geek radar is simply beyond my scope of understanding. I simply couch down for an uneventful evening of TV watching and web surfing. I pop open my PVR’s TV Guide to check out what’s on the tube of mediocrity. I toggle to The Movie Network. I spot something called Renaissance. Doesn’t ring a bell. It’s a French animation movie from 2006 the guide tells me. Well nothing else is on and since French made animation movies are often good I’m definitely in.
Turns out it’s a French, British and Luxembourgian made movie. The main character is voiced by the best James Bond ever, Daniel Craig and the movie just looks a-fucking-mazing. I just can’t get over how great this movie looks. This is how Sin City should have looked but was a big FAIL. But it’s the same principle.
The whole movie is a motion-capture extravaganza and is completely black and white, and I mean black and white with the exception of the rare grey-scales and 1 scene with color. It is pure gold to look at. This isn’t eye candy it’s eye feast. You can’t take your eyes away from it.
It gets better.
The film follows true film-noir crime drama modus operandi, to the letter. And this is good. Considering the visual aspect of the film. But it’s also a a cyberpunk sci-fi movie since it’s set in the future Paris and has to do with and evil corporation trying to do something unnatural with science.
Ilona, a young but gifted scientist is kidnapped and sequestered in some kind of holodeck. She works for the R&D division of an Avalon a huge multinational Cosmetics’ company that has a private Blackwater-like security team with cloaking or stealth suits that make them invisible.
But Avalon employs Section K, a special police unit led by Karas, a silent but deadly inspector to find Ilona. Along the way he meets up with Bislane, Ilona’s sister who also works at Avalon but as a data entry auxiliary. So the hunt is on and they eventually uncover what’s really going on and of course it’s not gonna be simple.
The story is brilliantly executed with amazing camera work and simply stunning visuals. One scene with flash-back was just unbelievable and another on a church top was so dramatic and so pretty, I had a tear in my geeky eyes and I was screaming with my arms flinging in the air. Rare are the movies that make me go apeshit like this.
5 sticky nerdgasms outta 5.
Agree with your assessment. Didn’t know about this movie either until I surfed it on Netflix. To borrow from your vernacular, it was “utter fucking brilliance.” Cheers!
Thanks for stopping by. Yes it was. I’m still in awe.