2307: Winter's Dream

Enjoyed several elements in this film, not the least of which was the performance of its lead actor Paul Sidhu. His character was quite cliché, but he dressed it up with a solid, believable performance. The rest of the cast was equally cliché, pretty much every character trope you've ever seen in a sci-fi action film. Unfortunately, most of the other actors, with an exception or two, did not pull off their performances as well as the lead. The action, and pacing we're good and the overall production quality was pretty decent. The plot is basically Blade Runner in a winter apocalypse with elements of Aliens and, well, five or six other sci-fi movies. It's a bit of a mess, story wise, there were flashbacks to the main character's backstory that were uninteresting and distracted from the action, but it held together enough to keep me wanting to see what happened next.

After reading some of the reviews for this film then watching it myself, my immediate thoughts went to how sometimes we go into films with too many expectations, especially when watching genre fare. But I tend to give ambitious Indy films the benefit of the doubt because I know from experience that they have tremendous financial obstacles to overcome. This "little Indy" is kind of epic though, and I was immediately impressed as to what was accomplished visually on such a low budget, which I've heard was around $750K. That's not even the catering budget of a studio film folks. Like most films, this one is definitely flawed -- some of the acting is mediocre and the story is heavily influenced by Sci-Fi predecessors such as BLADE RUNNER, PREDATOR, and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, but it has this unmistakable Western pace, mood, and atmosphere, that is especially heightened by a fresh Sci-Fi Western soundtrack. It's a filmmakers film most likely created by a cinefile, for cinefiles like me, with lots of cool references and homages to the classics, but to its credit, it also has some unexpected twists especially at the end. It is a film with a message, a spiritual message to be exact, which is rare in these days of empty thrill ride $180M blockbusters selling plastic heroes and paper tigers. I recommend this film to anyone who wants to have a cinematic experience and be immersed in a future reality that is not so far off from our present.

The story is not unique, but actually a good one. However when you combine that good story with bad acting, poor CG, terrible dialogues and immense plot holes, the output is inevitably below par.

I say bad acting because any mimic, gesture and voice acting are so exaggerated that you feel an urge to slap their faces to help them back to their senses. Other than a few main roles, every character is either shouting hysterically or acting overly self-confident.

Poor CG is acceptable in consideration of the lower budget.

Terrible dialogues are everywhere. Either there are lots of cut scenes or several writers authored the script individually and than shuffled the pages to make a scrambled innovation. The result stinks like a bowl of deteriorated and uncooked scrambled eggs.

Plot holes. Oh my! Countless. Self detonating non-explosive things, inverted hands with absurd axis shifts in camera view, unexplained relationships, and most importantly climate defying "everything"... In a movie of which the plot is about extreme climate change, some clothing freezes in water, which is surprisingly present in extreme low temperatures and some organic tissues survive in the same water source.

All in all, it would have been a masterpiece, toppling "Oblivion" of Cruise in many ways.

If you really have a two-hour spare time and the movie is free, watch till the end, against all odds. The ending is satisfactory. But the journey may get really boring and your thumb would reach out for the stand-by button any time.

Starts so-so ... continues even less so-so ... picks up where it's a little too late ... ends nicely enough although weak amateurish acting (despite all the effort everybody puts into making it look professional) is probably the main problem with this not so well made movie just as it is with most other low budget ones ...

the winter setting is kinda cool but not cold enough ... ;-) some shots and scenes are also fine enough to make me like them, especially in terms of lighting ...

overall, it reminded me of some really cheap and failed movies i used to watch in the Syfy channel in the mid 2000s (when it was still named Sci-Fi or something like that) and that was why i stopped watching that channel almost totally and started seeking better scifi stuff elsewhere on regular channels ...

From the very beginning, you can already see how the acting is, simply, horrible. The chemistry they tried to create between the squad members is so so so painful to watch that I had to turn off the tv. Could not get past 20 minutes.

It seemed like a good plot/concept but the execution makes it unwatchable.