Review of Renaissance (2006) by Warren G — 04 Dec 2008

Art style's starkness is initially intriguing but the detail lost by not regularly shading and beauty absconded w/color makes it wearying. An early scene is set in a club w/lights flashing. A bad choice. Fireworks, rainbows, and flower patches are impotent in black and white.

The acting's poor and since the actors only needed to lend their voices that's sad. But the script they were working w/wasn't strong anyway. The dialog's horrible. The writers know what ideas they want characters to express but not how to realistically phrase them. Speech comes out as foreign exposition.

The main character has 2 scenes of "oh snap! he's not following orders!" to make him look badass and they fail. The second has the jackass present himself to criminals before attacking, giving them time to hurt the hostage they don't use, instead of coming around the rows of long-shadow-casting statues to pop both of them before they know what's going on. Cover's just sitting there, kidnappers stupidly set-up right by a statue they can't see around, and the hero-cop walks down the aisle in plain view.

You can see where the plot's going very early in the movie which makes waiting for "revelations" boring. The company working on anti-aging products hires an investigation into deaths tied to people who live exceptionally long, the main character escaped some prison as a kid, the sister was found by Avalon at 13 and an overlay of the main character and a doctor show they've the same face but the doctor's older. So Avalon's been rounding-up/making longer-lived people to study how they can extend lives. The kidnapped chick suspected which's why she hired her sister's boyfriend to steal one of her employer's notebooks (presumably the one that shows when she was taken in by the company). There's a divide between the doctor and the CEO's motivations explaining why invisible agents are sent for the journal and cops're hired (that move might've been to divert suspicion). No other company is even named to let viewers wonder who dunnit. There's only Avalon.

I stopped watching this movie and haven't any unfinished business w/it. There're a few scenes that look real good but none of them were good enough to make up for this film's many faults.