That said, this is not a direct remake so much as another story that repositions the elements of the Scott film in cosmetically different relationships.

Natural City's R (Yin) is a sullen, misanthropic cop and member of a police squad assigned to respond to crises involving runaway cyborgs. He is also the very last cop his partners would ever want on such a squad, as he's utterly uninterested in protecting the lives of the officers he works with and, in fact, seems utterly unfazed when he gets several of his partners killed on one mission against the deadly runaway Cyper (Doo-hong Jung).

R's real agenda is petty corruption and saving the life of Ria (Seo), a dying cyborg stripper he wishes to fix up for his own recreational use. He is so very detached from humanity, in fact, that he sees nothing wrong with pursuing a solution that may require the sacrifice of Cyon (Lee), a fortune-telling prostitute so hungry for true love herself that she all but tells R she'd be his merely for the asking. Meanwhile, Cyper's still on the loose, and R's friend and superior Noma (Yun) finds about a thousand ways to call R an asshole.

The problem is, we can relate.

Only a surface resemblance

We're perfectly OK with conflicted protagonists, self-destructive protagonists, even downright evil protagonists, as long as their angst possesses sufficient meat to give their stories caloric value. And indeed, the spiritually deadened detective is a rich archetype that has provided grist for the storytelling mill all the way from Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon to that story's tonal descendant, the previously cited Blade Runner.

But among the many problems with Natural City is that its lovelorn, sleazoid R is neither multilayered nor fascinating. His devotion to the dying Ria seems less driven by tragic, doomed passion than it is by the bored self-interest of a sullen burnout who only needs a compliant sex doll because he's insufficiently interesting to satisfy a woman who would require more of him.

By the halfway point, we haven't been given any reason for emotional investment in his happiness. By the action-packed final battle against Cyper, we haven't been given any reason to give a flying damn about his survival. He is, in toto, what everybody calls him throughout the film: an asshole. And nothing but an asshole, as he never grows or develops into anything more.

And his lust object, Ria? Whom he buys and installs in his home? And is willing to commit any number of crimes to save? The story might have worked, despite R, were she possessed of the kind of effervescent or seductive personality that would lead a man to make tragic mistakes on her behalf. (That's where film noir comes from.) But she's nothing, too. She's already winding down when we meet her, and always seems about to fall asleep. She never establishes any kind of independent personality, or any soul. She's only in this relationship because it's what her owner wants.

All of which would still work just fine if the point of all this actually seemed to be that R was an emotional cipher with no options greater than cohabitation with an automaton. The tale would an effective bleak nightmare, if nothing else. But Natural City actually seems to believe that it's a tragic love story. It actually thinks we should mourn this shell of a man and this empty simulation of a woman, the way we would if their great love brought them to life. But there's no great love and no rebirth. There's nothing but a cold, vacant wind blowing through every frame they spend together.

As for the film's surface resemblance to Blade Runner: It is, visually, just as superlative, so much so that fans of production design for its own sake may well want to check it out for that element alone. But, seriously. Blade Runner had a workable, if not great, story to go along with its unforgettable visuals. Natural City has a pointless story to go along with its unforgettable visuals. Why would anybody be interested in seeing what Blade Runner would look like if the story totally sucked?