Streaming Sleepers: Take A Journey Back To NATURAL CITY On Kanopy
I can’t begin to tell you why Typhoon helmer Min Byung-chun only directed one other film just a few years later. I can’t…because I don’t have the answer. If someone does, I’m open to learning it, and only because Natural City, his last film as of twenty years ago today, was a highlight for me during a time when I was getting hardcore into Asian films following Jackie Chan’s post-Glickenhaus U.S. resurgence in the mid-1990s.
Billed as “South Korean ‘Blade Runner’” to some who’ve seen it, this sci-fi actioner stars Yoo Ji-tae in a story set in the year 2080, where the disgraced member of an elite tactical unit is forced to choose between saving the cyborg dancer he’s in love with, and stopping a menacing cyborg terrorist from unleashing a reckoning upon mankind.
The film is gorgeously shot and presented with ambitious flair for a market that quite possibly wasn’t ready for a film of this kind – an idea brought to my attention by friend and fellow indie journo and critic Cesar Alejandro Jr. when we discussed it a month or so back. Alas, Natural City is all we’re left with of Min’s short career in the director’s chair…a career that in my view deserved a lengthier period than just four years.
The film also stars Yoon Chan, Seo Rin and Lee Jae-eon, along with Jung Eun-pyo and action legend Jung Doo-hung as the lightning-fast cyborg villain, Cipher, and is also the man behind the film’s blistering, bone-crushing and bloody action sequences. Currently you can only find the film streaming over at Kanopy if you have an account with your local library, although it’d be real awesome if it landed on Netflix or Tubi or Asiancrush by now, or perhaps got some reinvigoration through physical media which is always cooler.
Happy twentieth Birthday, Natural City!
Native New Yorker. Lover of all things pizza, chocolate, pets, and good friends. Karaoke hero. Left of center. Survivor. Fond supporter of cult, obscure and independent cinema - especially fond of Asian movies and global action cinema. Author of the bi-weekly Hit List. Founder and editor of Film Combat Syndicate. Still, very much, only human.
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