Sleep Dealer (2008)
Director: Alex Rivera
Writer: Alex Rivera, David Riker
Starring: Leonor Varela, Jacob Vargas, Luis Fernando Peña, Giovanna Zacarías
Language: Spanish
Runtime: 90 Minutes approx.
Age Rating: 15
Genre: Sci-Fi, Drama
Reviewed by Ross Miller
It’s very unusual to find a sci-fi story that is set somewhere like Mexico for example, as this film is. Usually they take place within big, well known cities like New York or Los Angeles, or indeed space, and rarely are there many other elements other than the sci-fi stuff itself. Well Sleep Dealer is certainly an exception to this established “rule”, and is worth seeing for its originality and ingenuity alone.
Set in the near future, Sleep Dealer centres on a technology which allows Mexican labourers to work in the USA virtually instead of having to cross the border illegally. A similar technology that’s part of the same network also allows people to do things like see the person they are phoning and even save and sell their memories.
Much like Terry Gilliam’s Brazil or Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (although not quite on the same level, of course), Sleep Dealer mixes sci-fi with real life. Although we have this fantastic, mind-blowing technology, it is surrounded by old buildings, dirty streets, and the same criminal activity we have now. This isn’t a future that’s anything close to heaven as we’d all like it to end up being but just a slightly technologically improved version of what we have now. And that’s one of the major elements that lifts this out of potential mediocrity.
As with so many smaller, independent films, this is ambitious stuff. There’s a certain creative flair on display here that can be appreciated from afar as concepts or from within when experiencing it. Although some of them don’t exactly ring true enough to go along with for the entire runtime, for the most part the ambitious ideas pay off. Sometimes drawing comparisons and using things from real life can make us believe and relate to a film more than when it's completely fantasy; there may be a ludicrous technology at the centre of the film but there are also things such as video calling that don't seem too hard to imagine.
I would say the film is equal parts sci-fi and human drama. There is certainly the flashiness of this technology and special effects layered on top but a lot of it is about a man’s guilt for an action he wishes he could take back and another man’s wish for revenge. It takes this elaborate sci-fi storyline and showcases how this can affect everyday people’s lives, and shows how differently we would react if a similar thing had happened in the world we live in today.
The special effects aren’t exactly top-notch by today’s standards but let’s not forget this isn’t Spider-Man 3 or Transformers where they had upwards of 150 million dollars to spend. For the small amount of money they no doubt had, the effects are decent and sometimes impressive enough to work. It just goes to prove you don’t need a huge budget to make a movie look good, especially a sci-fi movie.
The reason to see the movie above all else is how original and creative it all is. Now certainly there are influences that are very clear here, The Matrix being a very evident one, but it doesn’t come off as it ripping anything off but rather it takes those ideas, morphs them into new ones, and employs them in such a way that it feels creative and fresh. Having said that, there are many elements here which I, for one, have never heard of in any other movie, such as being able to save and sell your own memories, which helps give it that unique backbone.
One of the weaker elements of the film, and this is what ultimately holds it back a lot, is how confusing a lot of it is. Now I can tell when it’s just that I personally can’t keep up or whether most people wouldn’t be able to and I think this is a case of the latter. There are a few of those aforementioned ambitious ideas that are clearly fighting for their place within the film and as a consequence some of the time it feels all a bit jumbled up. However it’s very rare that a sci-fi film gets the ideas to blend perfectly and Sleep Dealer unfortunately doesn’t fall into that category.
Although certainly not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, Sleep Dealer is an ambitious and unique film with a fascinating technological element and an admirable humanistic aspect to go along with it. It’s science fiction in a light I doubt you will have seen before.
