Renaissance

Though the film does possess one or two interesting elements, Renaissance suffers from an unpleasant and relentlessly distracting animation style that ultimately renders its few positive attributes moot. Director Christian Volckman employs the sort of stark black-and-white visuals that have been put to fairly good use in graphic novels like Frank Miller’s Sin City and Brian Michael Bendis’ Torso, though it becomes clear almost immediately that such an approach just doesn’t work within the context of a full-length motion picture. The shadowless atmosphere, which would be awfully tough to take even in short bursts, affords the proceedings an oppressive and thoroughly interminable vibe that’s sure to alienate even the most open-minded viewer, but even if one were willing to overlook the film’s repellent appearance, there’s still the uniformly underdeveloped characters and headscratcher of a storyline to contend with. The plot, which has something to do with a futuristic cop trying to track down a missing scientist, rarely makes any sense, as the four (!) credited screenwriters layer the proceedings with inane bits of technobabble and eye-rolling attempts at tough-guy dialogue (eg “I have an uncanny instinct for sniffing out a son of a bitch”). Daniel Craig offers up a fairly decent voice performance as the central character, admittedly, but the bottom line is that Renaissance‘s headache-inducing visuals are just too insurmountable an obstacle for the film to overcome.

no stars out of ****