Opiniones de usuarios

In the US we are inured to dealing with corporate service centers with call takers that speak barely understandable English. This form of remote cross border servicing is one of the characteristics of globalization of work made possible by the internet. What this film does is imagine the next logical step: the similar globalization of manual labor. By means of robotics and the WWW, the film depicts a world where robotic drones in the US do all kind of menial and dangerous work while the brains that control the drones sit or stand in a third world country. It's the ultimate dreamworld for the US of A: work without the annoyance of immigrants.

While the near-reality sci-fi concept is clever, the film itself screens as an Hollywood B-movie. The acting and plot development styles will be familiar to the popcorn-eating crowd that populates the local shopping mall multiplex. The special effects are not that impressive (not surprising considering a 2.5 million dollar budget). There is a dated Star Wars bit with planes shooting at each other while flying through a canyon. It's tiresome if you don't dig this kind of infantile action scenes.

On the positive side, the film is peppered with clever manipulation of language, satirical takes on American impressions of foreigners, jabs at the excesses of capitalism, and inspired blending of present and future. The "coyotes" of today have been replaced by "coyoteks" who will, for a fee, pierce your skin with the appropriate hardware plugs (called nodes) that will enable you to directly connect your body to the internet and to vie for a job at a cyber "maquiladora". If you get such a job, you will send some of your salary to poor relatives back home in the countryside. Money transfers have been simplified, but there are so many fees and surcharges (think of your cell phone bill) that one third of the principal is pilfered by corporations and the government.

You can read more about this subject of remote work at the faux website www.cybracero.com (read cyber plus "bracero"). Check it.

On the net, users have gone beyond sharing personal data. Now they upload memories (yes, sucked out of one's brain) to the TruNode central database and sell them to interested readers. While plugged in -- literally -- TruNode will even sense if you are lying. More interesting or juicy memories, more money. It's the hyper-commercialization and surrender of the human soul.

The ultimate target is the privatization of water. Alas a sad development currently in progress. In good Hollywood fashion, a successful attack is gathered against that idea. The dream of revolt is not dead. Cyber poor of the world, rise up!

Rarely does science fiction cinema depict the future of the 'third world', if at all. Alex Rivera's film, primarily set in the state of Oaxaca and the city of Tijuana, Mexico, certainly proves originality in its premise and vision of the future. But while Sleep Dealer's inventive depiction of the future of human labor, immigration and transnational borders is extremely interesting and thought provoking, Rivera fails to achieve engaging storytelling. The plot feels flat and characters seem one dimensional. Both actors remain unconnected with each other and the story. Their actions, at times, seem unmotivated and contradictory. I understand how this film could have been so much more, unfortunately it wasn't. Aside from director Rivera's critique on social and political progress, the story fails to break through.

Frankly, I admire Rivera more for his social, political and progressive vision rather than for his cinematic skills. The film, in the end, feels rough around the edges and leaves a bit to be desired…But still a good effort from a first time director, especially for such an ambitious project.

6 out of 10.

Sleep Dealer takes place in tijuana,Mexico, in a not so distant future.The world is heavily militarized, the boarders are closed and there's a global computer network to which people connect(trough nodes in their skin) that makes several kind of experiences possible like upload of memories and cyber labor.When Memo, a young man, accidentally gets his father killed; he decides to go to the city and look for a job. Soon he decides to get nodes implanted...Sleep Dealer is a very legitimate take on the future by the director Alex Rivera and at the same time it deals with some interesting issues like globalization,immigration and the coexistence of humans and technology.Obviously since this is a low-budget movie, the special effects are not impressive and a bit dated but that shouldn't keep you from enjoying this flick.The acting is average, what is truly great here is the premise,the inspiration behind all of it and the very smart concept of the movie. With a big budget and more resources this movie could had been truly amazing. Having said that, if you're a fan of sci-fi movies this is definitely a must-see.

7/10

An interesting and innovative Mexican indie sci-fi movie.

The movie is full of great ideas, the acting is OK (nothing of Pedestrian as some critics claim!), and reflects on modern issues but fast-forwarding them and imagining them in the near future, in which Mexico has become a colony of the USA, which controls the mains sources of wealth, and many of the youth has become a seedbed of cheap labor across the border - A world of semi-slaves who live and work with their bodies connected to a networking machine, economically impoverished and emotionally craving affection and human connection.

The special effects resent the lack of money, as they would have required a bigger budget to make them real and not that cheesy. However, this somewhat does not affect the believability of the movie and of its thoughtful approach to the future.

The script has highs and lows, ends predictably, and it has and some story flaws, the result being uneven. However, the movie has a terrific mood and atmosphere, a lovely believable personal story, and great depth.

The movie is believable most of the time, despite its flaws and lack of money, and a good start for director Alex Rivera. Somebody to watch out from now on.

The movie was released in Sundance in 2008 and won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize.

Sleep Dealer is a science fiction film. Memo works in a factory but tells his story through flashbacks. His father owned a farm which shut down due to a dam built nearby. Memo becomes a hacker and is able to break into a military computer system. He intercepts communications and is almost caught. A drone detects him and attacks their trailer nearby, killing his father.

He takes a bus to Tijuana and meets Luz, who has nodes on her wrist which taps into a network. She uploads memories to a trading company, and she tells him how to get the nodes on the black market. Nemo is robbed and later has cyber sex with Luz and discovers that she is selling memories of him to the network. While online, he finds Ramirez, the pilot of the drone that killed his father, and they partner up to take on the evil global government.

Sleep Dealer is sci-fi with a conscience; the story is good, with solid acting. Alex Rivera had previously made documentaries detailing the struggles of immigrants. He shows promise as s director and I look forward to his next movie.

Under a currently established World Bank system, credit or loans will not be issued to Third World countries and others unless they agree to allow foreign investors access to privatize their water supply. It required mass demonstrations in Bolivia to force out a subsidiary of Bechtel that had privatized the water supply, increased costs three-fold initially, dispensed with system upkeep, and left a quarter of the rural homes without access to water.

So, the premise of this film starts with something real and not futuristic. Soldiers/mercenaries? guard the water and Mexican citizens must pay exorbitant rates for it.

We then meet Memo (Luis Fernando Peña), a young man who hacks into the wrong system (like Matthew Broderick in War Games) and finds himself in big trouble.

When he runs off to a border town, he finds a job with the Sleep Dealers; a world where migrant workers' nervous systems are plugged into a global network, allowing them to do menial jobs in the U.S. for low wages but without setting foot in the United States, and a girl (Leonor Varela).

New director Alex Rivera creates a chilling scenario that is an indictment of global capitalism and a look at the lost promises of the Internet.

Most sci-fi buffs will find the film excruciatingly slow, but it provides much room for though about exploitation and capitalism.

Great idea, great setting, even a great story - and yet so boring. Reason: The characters remain paper dolls.

Rule 1A in all story telling is "show, don't tell". It doesn't matter how much a character emphasizes something - it's his actions that convince us. In this film there is none such character development - they just talk. When you don't believe in the characters, you don't care for them. And what makes a story exciting is that we care for the fate of our heroes. In Sleep Dealer I couldn't care less. Unfortunately, because I love the genre.

I should add that the photography and music is wonderful - that's what made me stay in the theatre and stopped me from giving this film one star only.

I am not a big fan of Mexican movies. But this one passed my time. Other than few cheesy special effects and illogical story line, it worth to watch. It will pass your time. That's all.

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.

Science fiction as a genre exposes two things about a culture: our hopes for the future, and our fears for the future. What foreign science fiction does for us then is tap directly into the hopes and fears of a culture that is alien to us.

The story of Memo mixes the Mexican condition with a cautious approach to an exciting technology. While "nodes" allow people to directly connect their brains to an Internet of sorts, "sleep dealers" construct cheap, unsafe sweatshops where noders can perform dirt-cheap labor for developed nations, without leaving home.

There are plenty of eye-opening layers of apprehension for the future that are taken straight from the Mexican psyche: the construction of the authoritarian Del Rio Dam in Memo's village echoes the ongoing "water rights" controversies throughout Central America; the closed border with America echoes isolationist fears; the ability of an American corporation to send warships into Mexican villages not only with impugnity but complete openness echoes fears of American corporate-driven hegemony.

Flag-wrapped Americans will deride this movie as Anti-American at worst; cultural ignorance at best. But it is a different sort of cultural ignorance that remains ignorant of the sentiments illustrated in this well-done foreign film.

The plot: A Mexican laborer, falsely targeted by the USA as a terrorist, goes to work for a "sleep factory", where he remotely operates robots for American corporations.

Sleep Dealer is a return to classic cyperpunk, like the early novels of William Gibson. It's a very believable world, full of near-future tech that's both intriguing and disheartening. Like Gibson's leftist criticism back in the 1980s, it examines globalism, isolationism, nationalism, and imperialism. It never becomes anti-American, but it probably will offend some conservative Americans. Some of the ideas are really great, and I liked how the movie played with current technological and political trends. Hopefully, if the movie were made today, it'd be a little more optimistic, but I kind of doubt it.

The biggest problem I had with Sleep Dealer was that it was so overt and explicit about its themes. Perhaps the director thought that these themes were too important to be coy about them. Regardless, it came across as a bit unsubtle and preachy. If you agree with the premises, you'll probably be pretty forgiving. Unfortunately, the acting isn't all that great, though it's good enough for a low budget, genre film. The special effects are a bit iffy, as well, but most people probably aren't expecting Avatar.

As long as you're willing to overlook some faults, this is an enjoyable and socially conscious science fiction movie that anyone can enjoy, regardless of their nationality.

I caught this film yesterday at the Sundance film festival. Sleep Dealer is definitely a bold attempt at crafting an independent FX film by an obviously talented up and coming director. More than once I thought of Cronenberg's "eXistenZ" but it is unfair to compare the two films. Sleep Dealer has a much more simple and perhaps a little weaker story and really suffered from an unoriginal and uninspired score, but I still might have had the score to Half-Life, a far more effective score in my head from the screening the night before. I can see why Sundance picked the film but I hope to see a more from this director in the future!

I can't believe this movie got only a 5.9 on IMDb. If you are someone who thinks, and if you like science fiction, this is a gem. It brings totally new angles to bear on cutting edge social issues; and if you think about what has been presented, you cannot find any flaw in the logic of it, even in the small points. In fact, one leaves the movie fearing that such a world is just around the corner and may be unavoidable. The acting is good and there are no lagging moments; every scene drives the plot. An excellent, deeply satisfying movie worth watching more than once.

Unfortunately I am driven to believe that the reason the rating on IMDb is not higher, is simply that the movie is in Spanish, and north American audiences just are not sharp enough to get it. Perhaps an IMDb rating over 6 is impossible without any car chases or sex crimes.

Good movie. Entertaining. Worth the time. It's no Blade Runner, but there are a lot of ideas at play, lots to mentally chew on. The "south of the border" POV works really well. And I liked the way the director didn't simply announce what year we were in and instead let us figure it out for ourselves. The details of the world all felt realistic and inevitable, like that's the way we're going technologically and socially. The lead actors were good, but a bit too old, looked like they were closer to 30ish when, for the story's sake, they should have been in their late teens or early 20s. The lead actress is beautiful but simply doesn't look Mexican (not Oaxacan at any rate). More like South American. The worst part was the special FX and animation. They look cheap. Which is a shame and doesn't do the rest of the film justice. Too bad the director didn't have a few million more bucks to spend on the FX and marketing, because this film deserves a look.

the trailer for this movie looked pretty interesting, but the actual movie -- as so often happens -- was not nearly as good as "promised". the non-US setting was actually a plus for me, as so many movies are already based in the US. i know this movie had a small budget, but it looks like it was shot in one alley and one bar, in TJ. robert rodriguez this guy is not.

the anti-US politics of course polluted whatever artistic pretensions the director might have had; art+politics == propaganda.

the lead actor looked medicated. the love story was boring and forced. billed as sci-fi this was more like soap-fi. the special effects were pathetic; i've seen better work done on an amiga computer. all in all a waste of time -- mine, and the people who made this snoozer.

'Sleep Dealer' is a bright, shiny, hard-working little sci-fi movie that bristles with allegorical and literal messages about technological imperialism, globalization, the exploitation of foreign labor and other serious matters. It's also about the theme of Sterne's 'A Sentimental Journey:' a "traveler" who essentially stays at home--and about how the world's clamoring have-not South in the future will be as full of technology as the North, as indeed it is already. The means of exploitation will be extended into the land of the exploited.

What saves this heavy talk is a soulful innocent who's connected, or 'branché,' as the French say--in the most literal sense: he gets fitted with electronic "nodes" all along his arms, neck, and back, so he can be plugged to a central computer in at the border and thereby help America to achieve its fondest dream: making others do all the menial physical work, but without allowing them to enter the country. Thus Mexicans in virtual factories, at a distance, in 12-hour night shifts, walled off by a militarized barrier, do America's hard labor by proxy just outside the actual physical USA. Memo (Luis Fernando Peña), Sleep Dealer's young hero, comes to the "Sleep Dealers" in a mixture of desperation and hope, to save what's left of his little family in a rural village in Oaxaca.

Memo isn't a lily-white Candide. He has hope and love to give, but he also has a kind of primal curse upon him: he has caused disaster to his nearest and dearest by eavesdropping on a totalitarian northern force that sends drones to make strikes anywhere and blow up what it defines as "bad guys." They detected his radio, assumed he was an enemy, and brought down tragedy on his family. Both as penance and because nothing keeps him in the village any more, he goes to Tijuana, "the world's largest border town," and gets a pretty woman named Luz (Leonor Varela) whom he meets on the bus to fit him with the necessary set of body nodes. She calls herself a writer. Actually she works for a high tech firm that sells memories, and in this Orwellian world of spiritual deprivation, his experiences become fodder for her.

All the machinery in 'Sleep Dealer' is grotesque and comic but it works inexorably to serve the North. Farming has become impossible for Memo's father since the river was damed and a private company took control of the local water supply. In their part of Oaxaca the "future" has become a thing of the past, the father says. They must appease a machine that will shoot them if they disobey, just for permission to go to a river and collect water that they must pay for. Later another threatening gadget gobbles up Memo's 'Sleep Dealer' earnings and transfers them, minus a big fee and taxes, to his family further south. He can talk to his mother and brother on a videophone.

It seems an unintentional irony in Rivera and David Riker's screenplay that the man who ultimately helps Memo and his family, though of Hispanic origin, is an American "pilot,' himself "connected by nodes: the system not only stands for immigrants who can't work at home but for how technology alienates people from real work everywhere.

'Sleep Dealer' was made after a long struggle through Sundance financing, and got good buzz at the Sundance Festival itself. Because the Hispanic-oriented distributor Maya is buying the film and may finance a substantial stateside theatrical release, Rivera was saying in December, it may have a better fate than the mere straight-to-DVD issue Justin Chang of 'Variety' predicted. It's hard to see why Chang, who did acknowledge the film's colorful visuals and "A for effort" f/x, indeed remarkably polished and stylish and at times even mind-blowing considering the low budget, describes Peña, who's like a combination of Javier Bardem and Robert Downey, Jr., as "a blank." The actor makes a sympathetic little man hero in the classic picaresque mold, and the film's story dramatizes its theme of how immigrants are at once exploited and excluded in a way that's not only full of vividness and irony, but trippy. Though Rivera said his real models are more in sci-fi literature than film, one can see why he'd also describe Terry Gilliam's 'Brazil' as "the Holy Grail." Rivera made the film in Spanish in Mexico, but is an American whose first language is English. One parent is from the US and the other from Lima, Peru, and he grew up in New Jersey. He has previously explored global have/have-not issues in documentary formats.

Seen at the San Francisco International Film Festival. It was also in the New Directors/New Films series at Lincoln Center.

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.

This movie was excellent and entirely not boring. It gave me chills at certain points. If you know anything about the privatization of water you will overly enjoy this movie. This is a take on how people are not connected to each other anymore and our ignorance/negligence helps large corporations/governments take us over and control us. The movie states a problem and brings about a touching solution with the help of well developed characters.

If you're a movie snob and can't get a useful message out of this film you didn't deserve to waste your money on it..

Watch this movie knowing that not a lot of money was spent on it.. It's not a 150 million dollar budgeted movie.. it used 2.5 million. I think Donnie Darko used about the same amount 7 years ago (to put into perspective). Rivera did an excellent job.

It caught my attention, probably because it was so unusual to your typical movies but it definitely sets interesting topics, and more importantly a perspective on how things can potentially end up.

I am not a big sci-fi person however, I would see this again. It's amazing how many aspects of the near future linked to the social issues were brought up. It lets you decide for yourself.. What do I mean by that ? you can decide if you agree or not, they do their job on painting the picture for you. Although, the acting was not really that impressive it did the job well. It was well casted for its purpose and budget. Would love to see more work like this. Look forward to hearing more.

Well, the above reviewer beat me to my warning: If you are some god forsaken film student, or "Hollywood" film buff, you will hate this film. The structure is open and allows for a great deal on viewer interpretation that most US film goers hate, and even fear. But I love, I love the director giving me images and direction, and then letting fill in some inferences and this not clearly delineated.

The film makes excellent cinematic use of cultural and social cyphers, and (I hate to say this almost for fear of "tainting" it; a slight magical realism to cast a wide net of meaning, not to tell some stupid plot arc formula. It is a brilliant, exciting, deeply satisfying movie (finally some one is talking abt these issues cinematically, and making a great movie), and I even found it fun. A well crafted daring film.

There I said it...BLADERUNNER

Why did i say it?..

because watching this movie reminded me how I felt the first time I saw Ridley Scott's masterpiece.

What gives?..

Well, although the two movies are light years apart in terms of budget and storyline what caught me was that Sleep Dealer creates a 100% believable future with it's inherent beautiful,nasty and grotesque humanity/technology co-existence. Very few sci-fi movies ever get that right, its usually "too shiny". The future looks scary after viewing Sleep Dealer, and all too real. Roy Batty would approve.

Great acting, real looking (non-hollywood-ed) people, a plot ...that develops throughout the movie, even a love story of sorts, and all this with cinematography and music that accents the whole thing just right.

To all involved:

THANK YOU / MUCHISIMOS GRACIAS

This is one of those movies that you watch and slowly "connect" to its reality. Many people disliked that. It was either to slow compared to most of the movies today or too intense an experience to people that don't like the feeling of immersion into something else. However, from what I am sitting, it was a great movie.

First of all, one must take a step back from the usual reviewer practice and take into account that all the actors in the movie are Mexican and so is the writer/director. I don't know what budget the movie had, but it was well done in acting, atmosphere, plot, details and special effects. Winning the Sundance festival (and not being about crazy people) should also count in its favor.

Second of all, I really enjoyed the movie. It has the feel of films like Blade Runner, only it hits really closer to home. Luis Fernando Peña was a real good choice for the main role, even if it wasn't a very challenging one. As in many good movies, the main character was the idea, the plot, and the actors were just slipping into their niche.

Bottom line: this is a sci-fi movie that needs to be seen. Whatever faults it has, they are far surpassed by its qualities. The social message is just as important as the vision of a future where we can have whatever we wish for, only that we wished wrong. See it. It is worth it.