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France, Luxembourg, United Kingdom · 2006
Rated R · 1h 45m
Director Christian Volckman
Starring Daniel Craig, Catherine McCormack, Romola Garai, Jonathan Pryce
Genre Action, Animation, Science Fiction
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A young gene researcher, Ilona, is kidnapped in a future Paris. Police Captain Karas and his team are in charge of finding her. Karas must plunge deep into the parallel worlds of corporate espionage, organized crime, and genetic research to find Ilona and unlock the secrets of her disappearance.
For a little while, the film is dazzling. Then it's dizzying. Then it's just kind of . . . wearying. That's not because it's in black-and-white; so was "Sin City". There's just something terribly, tragically dull about Renaissance.
The New Yorker by Anthony Lane
One of the year’s more luscious releases, offering not just the sleekest car chase but the most romantic of rainstorms.
The director is Christian Volckman, whose skills as an animator greatly exceed his grasp of an idea worth pursuing.
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
The film's look is impressive; it's the most successful rotoscoping effort to date (far surpassing Richard Linklater's duo of "Waking Life" and "A Scanner Darkly"), and causes every frame to drip atmosphere.
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Crust
A visually wondrous experience in high-contrast black and white, bogged down by a slow, underwrought story and uninvolving characters. It would be easy to dismiss it as another great-looking film with little else to offer, but that wouldn't be entirely true.
A melancholy actioner that shines a new light on film noir. A sort of "The Third Man" for the 21st century, chiaroscuro curio's level of graphic invention is exceeded only by its pleasingly mournful approach.
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
Connoisseurs of digital animation, graphic novels, and the history of dystopian art will have plenty to discuss about Christian Volckman's visually striking, technically impressive black-and-white animated feature Renaissance…But no one will be talking about the movie's banal plot, the trite dialogue, or any of the indistinguishable characters who offer a bleak futuristic vision of cinema that's all style, no soul.
Some kind of wonderment.
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
Over the course of 105 minutes, the brutal high contrast begins to strain the eyes. Effectively moody as it is, the style makes a convoluted story of corporate greed, high-tech espionage and science run amok even more difficult to follow.
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