Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here. This is one of the Sundance titles I'm most interested in personally. I love low-budget SF that pushes the genre in new directions, and I hope this lives up to the early buzz I've heard building. Quint's right hand man, Kraken, is the first to send us a review on it, and I'm excited to hear more from him about it when I see him after the fest. Check this out:
So my first Sundance festival experience has been a great one so far. I've seen some extraordinary films like IN BRUGES, THE WACKNESS and THE GREAT BUCK HOWARD. The awesomeness of these films is sure to make up for the inevitable frost bite I'm sure to receive in this deep freezer they call Park City. Yesterday I got to see an interesting Sci-Fi flick set in Mexico called SLEEP DEALER. It takes place in a non-specific future, I'd estimate around 2025, where corporations and the military have taken control of the planet's new scarce resource, water. In the small Mexican town of Santa Ana Del Rio, where there is no longer a "Rio" because of a dam built by the military guarded water management corporation, we meet a small family of Milpa farmers who are struggling to survive and keep their farm alive even though the price of water keeps increasing on them every week. The eldest son of the family is the restless Memo (played by Luis Fernando Peña) who diligently helps his father with his crop, but dreams of a better life than growing beans and corn in a dying patch of earth. He loves technology and has built a make shift satellite and receiver to hack into the Node Network. In this future earth workers can now log on to the Node Network via a series of eerie glowing tubes connecting to various ports on their body called "nodes" and carry out jobs all over the world via their virtually controlled robot counter parts. Not everyone can afford the process of having the nodes installed, but those who can are almost guaranteed work at the "Sleep Dealer" factories. The factories are nicknamed such because of the exhausting effect working in this virtual environment has on them since the factories also drain a little of your own body's power to help run the infrastructure of the network and the robots they control. The simple fascination with node technology and a better life is where Memo's suffering beings. One night while listening to the various chatter of the node "workers" on his hacked receiver he stumbles on a military transmission. The node network is also the place where the new military controls their various flying sentential fighter jets. Memo listens in on the transmission and hears them running an operation on a group of "water terrorists" in some distant country. He thinks nothing of it until the next day when he and his brother are in the town market watching an American HD channel and a show that sensationalizes these virtually controlled military operations like an episode of Cops mixed with Jerry Springer. The episode features a new military pilot, Rudy (Jacob Vargas), on his first mission. Terror rises in Memo as he quickly realizes that the mission Rudy has been given is to destroy a terrorist hacked node satellite in the small town of Santa Ana Del Rio... his town... his house. As Memo and his brother rush back to their house in the country, we watch as the young pilot Rudy controls his unmanned virtual fighter and seeks out and destroys Memo's family home. Rudy sees someone crawling out of the wreckage, Memo's father, and has a moment of hesitation before sending a missile flying towards his face. This event sends Memo on a journey into the big city seeking a cheap "node job" from a Coyotek and find work at the Sleep Dealer factory to make up for his mistake and take care of his mother and brother. Along the way he meets a journalist named Luz, played by the beautiful Leonor Varela. One of my favorite aspects of this film is the concept of how journalists work in the future. Luz decides to do a "story" on the immigrant worker Memo by getting to know him and help him with his quest for a good "node job". In this future writers export their memories into the TruNode system, and record narration to go along with the images in the memories. The most interesting aspect of this is since they're physically hooked into the TruNode system, they also can't lie about the narration they are giving for the memories they are uploading, ultimate journalistic integrity. Once the pieces are finished, they are uploaded to a Itunes-like site where people can find these memory stories and purchase them to virtually experience. The "writer of the future" concept is just one of the interesting things in this future world that director/writer Alex Rivera has envisioned that I found fascinating and the design of the film reminds me a lot of the Sci-Fi films of the 70's and 80's like THX 1138 and RUNNING MAN. It's very much a Philip K Dick inspired world dealing with a future where countries like the United States want the workforce from Mexico, but not the workers (mentioned by one of the Sleep Dealer managers). The Sleep Dealer factories themselves are rife with danger to the workers from computer viruses that can make you go blind, to power overloads that will randomly kill the people hooked up to the node system. The CG effects in the film suffer a little from budget restrictions, but are used sparingly enough to get the Sci-Fi elements of the film across to the audience, but not distract from the heart of the story. The performances from everyone involved are very solid and help ground the fantastic parts of the film in a very gritty reality. To say anything more about the plot of the film would give away too much I feel. But I think any Sci-Fi fan would really enjoy the concepts in this film. They are not used as a crutch, but as a subtle background for a thoughtful drama about love and making up for mistakes. The director does a great job of making this world feel real and I would love to see him given a bigger budget and expand his ideas and vision of what the future might hold for us. If this film is director Rivera's THX, I can't wait to see his Star Wars. Kraken
