Sin City meets Waking Life in Christian Volckman’s futuristic Euro-anime, which combines the monochrome visuals of a Frank Miller graphic novel with human actors rotoscoped into protean versions of their living selves. The result is both bold and striking, set as it is in a 2054 Paris where familiar landmarks like the Notre Dame and the Sacre Coeur perch hundreds of feet above a hi-tech, excavated dystopia. Alas, it’s also relentlessly dull, with noirish chases and shoot-outs buried in a sea of Gallic pretension.
The chief drawback is the impossibly convoluted sci-fi plot, involving a roughneck cop stumbling upon the secret of immortality while searching for a missing girl. Add Daniel Craig and Jonathan Pryce dubbing shadowy synthespians that look nothing like them and the result is a recipe for bonce-scratching bewilderment.
