Johan Dondokambey
For me Sleep Dealer presents quite a great combination of sci-fi, drama and romance in it. It opens up mysteriously, in a level just enough to incite the viewers' curiosity in combination with the catchy title.. The movie runs on a combination of heavy multiple sci-fi concepts. Yet the screenplay and direction managed to let all those concepts can be explained adequately with enough details and immerse with the focus story nicely. I particularly like the use of simple effects in video editing such as blurring and light plays here and there to distinguish which moments are of reality, memory, or first person control. The one thing felt very much lacking in this movie is the visual effects. The drones and their shadows don't look convincingly blended with the footage, even when the film has apparently received color adjusting treatments. The acting overall is just enough to make the whole story and concepts delivered to the viewers. Pena and Varela acted out nicely though they're not perfect performances.
westside-surfer
It's great to finally see a sci-fi that does global injustice right. Elysium was pretty good, but it doesn't capture the gritty realism the way Sleep Dealer did.This drama is effective because it hits close to the reality between US and Mexico. It takes that godawful situation and built a very interesting story intertwined with a technology that could one day exist. The combination of poverty with technology makes for some awesome cyberpunk.The CG is a bit on the crappy side, but I could overlook it because the movie was story driven. It didn't rely on special effects. The visuals that did work did awesomely. They helped build the tone and didn't function as cheap shortcut.Say adios to high budget garbage.
mh ke
I really don't know why this movie gets praised in the reviews and has a relatively high score. (5.9 at the time) Sure it's a low budget film and it's impressive to pull something like this off, chase your dreams and realize the movie you always wanted to make, but in my opinion it doesn't deserve a higher score than 3.First off the only interesting part of the movie is the future work issue and it should have focused on this a lot more. I don't know if i should blame the writing or the acting, but the love story and the other story string seem so forced it hurts. Also there isn't much tension between the characters. their development is very one dimensional and weak, just like the story overall. It was at no time thrilling, but rather boring. Which is the fault of the acting, writing, the general plot and the cutting which wasn't good either. Some scenes just don't fit or end too fast. After watching the making of i can also say that the idea just wasn't good enough or well thought out and that it felt like they had to stretch the movie to get this runtime.In the end i'd say portraying work in the future or general sci-fi is an approach that could be interesting, if it's done right.
socrates99
Hollywood seems to have no use for a certain point of view, much to its own cultural diminution. Probably the single most repeated objective seen in the US history with Latin-America is its wish to garner the lion's share of the profits from its economic development. This is one of the very few movies to take the side of those being exploited and on that basis alone, I'd be happy to recommend it to any serious movie goer. But there's much more here than just that. There's real skill on display in its execution and conception. This is a low budget film, but its ability to say a great deal anyway, and especially through science fiction, is positively inspirational. Leonor Varela graces the screen like some impossibly dusky cinematic angel. And Luis Fernando Peña is also spot on.This film won some important awards, but, not surprisingly, I never heard of it until I was lucky enough to find it on my Blockbuster shelf. I'd love to see its director, Alex Rivera, continue on in this theme, but having heard about the small-mindedness of Hollywood, I can't help thinking this might be his only film.
AD
