Stephen Colbert once noted that movies are nothing more than watered down trailers. Renaissance does that sentiment one better by being not only a watered-down version of its own trailer, but also a watered-down combination of several other movies. The trailer is enough to set the nerves of any sci-fi action junkie a-tingling — it’s a thrill ride of contrasty futuristic cityscapes, high-octane chase scenes, and ominous quotes from the movie — but actually watching the film is a far different experience.
In the far-flung future of 2054, Paris police detective Karas receives an assignment to search for a missing research scientist. The scientist, Ilona — who is naturally a beautiful young woman and whose equally attractive sister is somehow mixed up in the film’s plot — works for Avalon, the incredibly large corporation that owns everything and employs everyone. Honestly, what is it with dystopic futures and giant corporations in the movies? We have real-life examples of these companies and it’s easy to see that once they get that big they invariably lose the ability to do anything but buy the smaller companies who are doing all of the innovating. Look at Microsoft - megabillions of dollars in the bank and they can’t ship a simple MP3 player without screwing it up. How then are we supposed to believe than Avalon could (possibly) be orchestrating a conspiracy? I’d like to see a movie about an evil start-up dot-com, or maybe a shadowy food co-op.
This being a film noir knock-off, nothing is quite what it seems in the course of Karas’ investigation and at the center of the mystery is a secret so incredibly deep and dark that — yaaaaaaaaaaawwwwn. Call it Blade Runner Lite or Buck Rogers in The Big Sleep, Renaissance features a plot so derivative and dialogue so laughably predictable that the filmmakers take the only course left to them in order to make the film seem exciting — they throw as much visual stimulation as possible at the screen in a desperate attempt to distract the audience from the fact that the story is so much fluff.
The film is presented entirely in silhouetted white on black, giving it a stark look that is at first intriguing but wears on the eyes after about thirty minutes. There’s no disputing that it communicates hard-core minimalist futurism like no other film before it, but I wonder if the filmmakers thought much about the message in their medium. Classic noir films dealt with the moral flexibility required to survive in the modern world — in short, about the shades of gray in all of us. It’s difficult to believe that the creators of a movie with such a hackneyed story chose to impose a straight black-and-white look on the film with intentional irony. One might have questioned the wisdom of combining hard-boiled film noir tropes with animation in the first place, but it’s important for filmmakers to try new things even if, ultimately, they fail.
Those looking merely for the pulse-pounding action scenes promised by the trailer won’t be disappointed. There are flying car-chases, hyper-kinetic gun battles, and Matrix-style bullet-time scenes a-plenty, and it’s hard to deny the picture’s artistry in such things. When two characters kiss, however, the illusion falls apart — their lip-lock is so artificial that what could have been a tender moment is broken. That phony feeling pervades Renaissance as a whole. Sure, a good noir detective story is about heart-stopping fear and dramatic revelations, but it also requires a hero you can root for. Karas has neither the vulnerability of Rick Deckard nor Sam Spade’s steely wit; he just can’t carry an audience past the threshold of disbelief.
