A retraction

In two different posts earlier this year, I cast a skeptical eye on a little Mexican sci-fi film called Sleep Dealer. In the first post, it was a direct attack. In the second, it was indirect, more of a dismissal of it as "the best they could come up with" for the Latino image awards.

Well, I saw the movie last night, and darn it if it wasn't really good.

You may remember (especially if you just followed the first link above) that my skepticism was primarily based on what I considered to be its theft of the iconography of The Matrix in its billboards. I'm pleased to tell you that writer-director Alex Rivera does not actually owe a debt to the Wachowski brothers -- at least, no more so than any other filmmaker who has been influenced in some way by their landmark film. It's got plenty of its own interesting ideas about the way linking our bodies to machines may one day change our day-to-day existence -- even if those ideas are in fact purely science fiction.

For example, the central idea is very interesting: That one way for the U.S. to outsource its labor would be to have not only its tech support in other countries, but to keep the actual people doing the grunting and lifting there too. Sleep Dealer posits a world where workers slaving away on 12-hour shifts in Tijuana could connect their bodies to machines via cables that enter nodes affixed to their skin. In that way, they could remotely control robots that climb up and down the sides of a San Diego skyscraper under construction, or milk cows in Iowa. The movie sardonically -- though, alas, probably accurately -- suggests that some Americans would love the benefits of Mexican labor, without having to look at or tolerate actual Mexicans.

Oh, and that's only one of the many interesting ideas this movie touches on. You should definitely check it out.

Another complaint I had was that I doubted there would be any way for Sleep Dealer to meet the visual expectations of a viewing public raised on top-notch special effects. Well, having watched it, I feel guilty for having blithely assumed that good visual effects were impossible without Hollywood money. Yeah, you can tell that Industrial Light & Magic wasn't involved, but darn it if those effects don't look plenty good on their own. Good enough, anyway, when the script is as good as Rivera's script is.

I was already planning to pimp Sleep Dealer in my blog today when I noticed over breakfast a newspaper ad for Pandorum, which made me realize I had even more reason to let Sleep Dealer off the hook. I don't think Pandorum has much to do with The Matrix either, but it's no less guilty of trying to remind us of The Matrix with its own poster, as seen above.

And if I'm going to give either movie the benefit of the doubt, it should be the one that really needs the help to get the viewers it deserves, not the one starring Dennis Quaid.

Matrix-minded

I've seen the large advertisement for Sleep Dealer enough times on my way home from work that I thought it was time I finally wrote something about it.

The little indie first caught my attention because of the rather arresting image you see to the right, which not so subliminally calls to mind a little 1999 film by Larry and Andy Wachowski. There's a sizeable billboard for Sleep Dealer perched about a quarter-of-a-mile from my house, and it's not the only one I've seen around town.

It's one of those movies you look at and can't quite comprehend, because you haven't heard of it, but it also sort of looks like it has a budget. Every time I'd sit at the traffic light contemplating it, I'd tell myself I had to look it up on IMDB when I got home. On about the sixth time I actually remembered to do it.

It turns out Sleep Dealer was at Sundance in 2008, and true to its appearance from the poster, features some kind of future-world big-brother network of computers as one of its main plot elements. I'm always curious about science fiction, since it's such a hard genre to do well. But I was even more curious about this particular movie, because I'd squinted to see the names listed in the billboard credits, and hadn't recognized any of them. In fact, most of them seemed to end in the letter A.

Yep, here was a large billboard in the middle of the city for a movie made in Mexico, by a Mexican, and starring Mexicans. LA's definitely the right city if you're trying to get Mexican viewers, but that's simply not something anyone tries to do here, at least not with movies. TV and radio shows, yes, but not movies. Mexicans aren't seen as a viable market. Maybe the studios just don't think they like movies.

But more generally ... when I thought about it, I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen a billboard for any movie that wasn't one of the two or three studio offerings that come out each week. I have plenty of other ways to be aware of those other movies, to be sure, but it's not because they're advertised. Especially not advertised on billboards.

I don't know the actual costs of these things, but to me, an outdoor campaign usually seems a more expensive advertising endeavor than TV. It seems to be the greater indication that you're fully committed to the movie. So I expected to see a TV campaign for Sleep Dealer accompany its arresting billboard. But the movie comes out on Friday, and I still haven't seen it.

Then I finally got it.

On that billboard, they can make people think they'll be seeing the next Matrix. But if they played moving images ... well, then the jig would be up, wouldn't it?

So Sleep Dealer appears to be the rare movie that benefits more from a single image than a number of them in sequence -- as movies are actually made. Then again, maybe it's not so rare. Every straight-to-video movie in the video store tries to grab you with a false promise of seeming coolness. Why should Sleep Dealer be any different?

Well, because it's actually going to theaters, that's why. That one picture of Matrix-like plugs going into Matrix-like outlets on the Matrix-like back of a Matrix-like guy with a Matrix-like shaved head seems quite a gamble for a movie getting released in theaters, especially one that may not be able to back it up.

To confirm my theory, I just went online to check out the trailer. Yep. I can hardly believe it's getting a theatrical release, and these C-grade images would shut down the core Matrix audience in no time flat.

Hey, I'm not saying it will be bad. I'm just saying that movies like this don't get theatrical releases anymore. They don't even get the chance to be good.

For their sake, let's just hope appropriating the image of Keanu Reeves for their advertising campaign gives them that opportunity.