Realive

It's more of a sad love story than a sci-fi!! Lack of drama, poorly written characters!!

Marc Jarvis (Tom Hughes) is a rich, young, successful artist who is suddenly told that he has cancer and has at most a year to live. He decides to freeze his body in the hopes that future medicine can cure him, but his girlfriend Naomi (Oona Chaplin) is horrified that he means to take his own life in order to ensure that his body is in as good condition as possible when he dies. Nevertheless, he does just that… only to wake up some 60 years later; Dr. West (Barry Ward) and his team have learned, through trial and error, how to reanimate frozen humans. Marc is their first complete success, and with the help of nurse/assistant Elizabeth (Charlotte Le Bon), Marc struggles to find meaning in his new existence, while his long-ago past still pulls at his heart…. I'm not sure why this is a Spanish film as it's in English and features British actors; but, no matter. It's a really thoughtful science fiction film that addresses not only technological advances but the moral and ethical problems associated with them. I very much liked Tom Hughes (who looks a bit like Cillian Murphy) because he was able to take his character through a very complex maze of emotional realities; then again, everybody in this film is good. Interestingly, the problem of how to portray the future was solved by simply having Marc remain in the facility in which he was reborn, because his body was not strong enough (yet) to adapt to outside conditions; a neat explanation that means the viewer isn't taken out of the picture by seeing a future world that looks cheesy or contrived or otherwise unnatural. Well done, filmmakers!

Ambitious, not often successful story of a young man who made his way of life triumphantly,and who ,terminally-ill ,chooses cryogenic freeze , to be able to "realive" in the future when the science,in the shape of Dr West (a nod to the excellent "re-animator " feat. Jeffrey Combs ), is able to give him a second chance in another era .

Although there's numerous hints at religion (the Lazarus project :"lazarus ,come forth !"), the fact that immortality may make gain another world but lose your soul ;in fact ,you want to find back what you've lost , but time moves like a jet plane and it's a brand new world you have to face .

Thanks to a brand new technology ,you can record your memories (why not? A hundred years ago ,who would have thought of the computering revolution? ),but those memories are a jumble,for they come from every moment of your life ( cruelty to animals -the lizard and the hen-is gratuitous and pointless);besides , Naomi ,to do what she does ,must have experimented l'amour fou and nothing really shows it (unless a would be torrid sex scene counts);besides, Marc's impossibility to adapt himself to another way of life (the new sex lib is not that much new ,it recalls the hippies) is not fully exploited :it was already brillantly treated in Frankenheimer's sensational film ,"seconds"(1966)

This film is interesting but it is mainly a missed golden opportunity.

I didn't read any reviews or see a trailer before watching so I had no preconceptions. Afterwards after reading the other 4 reviews I wondered what the really good reviews saw in this film. My guess is that maybe they expected a film that was less competently made, or maybe they expected a less serious film - and were surprised at how well made and serious this was. My guess also is that the obvious flaws of the film were overlooked or not noticed by them because of how well put together it is, just a guess. The problems with this film outweigh the good production and good story. Those problems are: the slow pacing; repetitiveness; morose lead actor; lack of anything stimulating and generally a drag. To give an analogy I would compare this to a college lecture by a really smart teacher who is really good at explaining the lessons but is dry and pedantic and puts students to sleep vs. an entertaining teacher who keeps students on the edge of their seats. While I am not asking this movie to be Transformers, still the script needed much more work before this was made. The story is interesting and with I imagine a limited budget they were able to pull off an impressive production, but with a boring script it ends up being a waste of time since it is so repetitive and really does not go far enough story wise. This would have worked well as the first 40 minutes of a different story, as it stands it will leave most people cold and few will stay to the end, and if they do most of them will regret it since nothing exciting or entertaining ever happens. It moves slowly and dull till the end.

Essentially there is nothing wrong with this movie other than the basic plot of the story, which bogs down in a mire of pedestrian navel gazing.There is no sci-fi here really to speak of, the future world is only vaguely referred to inside of the reanimation clinic. On the plus side its visually great, and Québécois super hottie Charlotte Le Bon gets her bum out, that alone makes this a must-see.