The Unseen Movie Review

Sky Blue

Korean cinema is undergoing a major renaissance at the moment, with a series of minor hits and numerous relatively small-budget, critically acclaimed movies hitting film festivals worldwide. The majority have been heavily influenced by recent Japanese cinema – notably the likes of “Beat” Takeshi Kitano’s gangster flicks and the horror movies of Hideo Nakata and Takashi Miike. Now it seems they’re branching out into Japanese-style animation to boot.

Since the success of Hayao Miyazaki’s enchanting Spirited Away, western interest in Asian animated films seems to be on the rise. Perhaps with the spread of American feature-length cartoons away from merely Disney fairy tales with the likes of Toy Story and Shrek there is also a growing appreciation that cartoons are not merely for kids.

Until recently, if you wanted cartoons aimed at adults you’d go to Miyazaki’s homeland of Japan. There has been some interest in Japanese Anime ever since Akira burst onto our screens back in the late 1980s, and this latest animated sci-fi epic is very much in that mould – not least thanks to the designs of the futuristic motorbikes. But as it’s Korean, it looks like Japan may finally have a rival in the animation for grown-ups market.

Seven years in the making and with a price tag of $10 million – a lot for a Korean movie – Sky Blue was originally released as Wonderful Days back in 2003, but has only just made it to this part of the world. Set in a now fairly familiar post-apocalyptic future, the year is 2142, and the city of ECOBAN is running out of fuel, its scientist founders resorting to using human beings as furnace fodder to keep their dream alive. As is so often the case with this kind of science fiction set-up, a group of freedom fighters are determined to destroy the city and save the oppressed masses. It’s The Matrix without the alternate reality and robots, basically.

An innovative blend of traditional hand-drawn and computer animation, this is the kind of visual feast which the big screen was made for. In fact, it would be perfect for an IMAX screen, as the level of background detail is such that bigger is most certainly better. The fact that the plot is hardly original and the script nothing overly special is entirely incidental. The entire film is an sumptuous orgy of special effects and surrealist images of a dystopian future vaguely reminiscent of a combination of Akira and Blade Runner. Which, let’s face it, can’t be bad.

Although sometimes the blend of traditional and computer animation jars a tad, it is nonetheless the kind of eye-candy which all too rarely gets an outing on UK cinema screens, and as such should be taken full advantage of. Even with its flaws, this is one of those movies that really demonstrates the exhilarating power of the movies.

posted by Nosemonkey @ 4:07 AM