Scorched Earth

7/21/2024

**Shadowrun**! The film promotion probably needed a mention of Nouvelle Vague; and I too quickly thought of Melville's classics. But even if the previous film hadn't been called ‘In the Shadows’: This is Shadowrun. Without magic, metahumans, and in the Germany of 202x - but otherwise a street-level Shadowrun. A solo, a fixer, a job; a rigger, a decker, a samurai about to retire; a Schmidt¹... and the run. After the introduction of the characters - Trojan gets the longest, the others progressively shorter - the run gets underway in classic Shadowrun fashion. The sober realism is very pleasing. Even German ÖRR crime thrillers today have a slight superhero halo around the characters. Here, on the other hand, the production conveys: this is real street level, Chummer; a single