Sleep Dealer: A movie review
Stars: Luis Fernando Pena, Leonor Varela, And Jacob Vargas
Directed By Alex Rivera
PG-13; 2008 90 min. Spanish with English subtitles.
((( There are No Spoilers included in this review )))
Like its Mumbai cousin, the 2008 independent Spanish science fiction film Sleep Dealer flew right under the radar of most Americans. I remember seeing a Sleep Dealer poster here around town. Living in LA, I wasn’t sure if it was a cable mini-series, feature film or homo erotic theater. The poster featured some dudes upper back with wires and cable ports popping out like a Borg drone. Within a few weeks the poster was gone and the film a (maybe see it on DVD) memory.
Fortunately last week I stumbled upon the Sleep Dealer DVD. Because of the cool looking alternate cover art and rareness of the film I picked it up immediately. I wasn’t sure what to expect, the region code was missing and the film’s in Spanish with English subtitles. Could this film be the science fiction Slumdog Millionaire, or a Hispanic MST3K crap-fest?
Well I usually don’t waste my time writing reviews on crap. Sleep Dealer was one of the best science fiction films I’ve seen since last years, Moon or District 9. Its ambitious clever writing is performed by an amazing cast that delivers a remarkable Hispanic Orwellian view of the future.
South of the US border in a not so distant world from our own, Sleep Dealer unfolds as a glitch in the system. Memo Cruz (Luis Fernando Pena) dreams of leaving his fathers milpa in search of a better life away from the poverty and disconnected slum town of Santa Ana. His father wants him to eventually take over the farm but Memo has other plans. Listening to the outside world, on what’s left of an ancient ham radio he dreams of leaving the farm and getting a job in the real world. Unfortunately the real world is living in a virtual police state with the U.S. acting as a super drone enabled one world reality TV global military force. (I bet you didn’t see that coming!)
One night not realizing what he’s listening to, Memo stumbles into a military transmission. This leads to a series of tragic events that propel him out of Santa Ana and into the world to find work and support his family. On the bus to Mexico’s “city of the future” Tijuana, Memo meets Luz (Leonor Varela) a freelance memory writer. She’s the first person Memo has ever seen that has nodes. In the future mankind has augmented internet technology into a virtual quantum global reality, in which people can jack themselves into to all kinds of employment possibilities through implanted nodes on the arms and neck. These nodes connect to a data hard line allowing the nervous system to act as a human interface. Akin to live-blogging your very thoughts.
Luz sees a possible memory she can sell in Memo and quickly starts up a friendship with him. While hearing his story she realizes that Memo is in need of employment and let’s him in on where the black-market coyotek’s (node installers) hang out. Meanwhile after posting her virtual memory of Memo online she’s surprised that it’s attracted a buyer. It seems that somebody else is very interested in Memo and is willing to pay handsomely for more information on his past.
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What I really liked about this film was its clever view of our future. I wasn’t expecting this from a independent Spanish film. The vision of the future was very detailed and brutal. The world of Sleep Dealer reminded me of the brilliance of Slumdog Millionaire in that its beautiful and shocking all at once. The English subtitles cleverly add a disconnected yet connected perspective to the Sleep Dealer reality, as the shocking relationship to the plight of Hispanic immigrants is brilliantly spun into a Dystopian fairy tale of a futuristic world totally out of touch with humanity and controlled by greed.
HD fans will cringe at some of the grainy shots and the story does obviously take elements from The Matrix, Children Of Men and Star Wars (a new hope) but it’s fresh and very smart. The one thing that stood out while watching Sleep Dealer was the rating it received from the MPAA. PG-13 is great for distribution but did it help in this case? Would a 13-year-old even understand this film or have the attention span to watch it? Ironically that’s part of the message here, as there’s subterfuge throughout.
10 out of 10!
Sleep Dealer is an ingenious science fiction film and wake up call to bloggers everywhere. Seek it out and watch it before its too late!
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