2307: Winter's Dream

As to setting a premise, and then violating at every turn = 100 But then: As intelligent entertainment = zero As for quality acting = zero As for budget to make = must have been close to zero As to ability to raise audience heart rate through enjoyment = zero As to appropriateness of title = zero Seriously, other than indulging the creator's personal interests and desires, how could one, in good conscience, put this out as anything but an insult to an audience? Best left as a "home movie".

300 years in the future, after the whole planet is frozen over, Bishop (Paul Sidhu) is asked to hunt the renegade android ASH 393 (Branden Coles). The high intelligence and supeerhuman strength of his opponent makes that an extremely hard task in a hostile environment. Besides, Bishop's general hasn't told him the whole story before he sent him on that mission...

Produced for less than a million dollars, the movie is quite ambitious for its low budget. Its frozen future world reminds me a little bit of Robert Altman's 'Quintet', but unfortunately '2307' enjoys its gun battles in trash movie style too much and has only actors with limited capabilities while suffering a bit from pretentiousness. The best supporting actors are Timothy Lee DePriest as Ishmael, whose harmonica playing is another reference to western movies, and Arielle Holmes as Kix, the most fanatical member of Bishop's team. What we finally get is a movie that fits into the 'Cyborg' subgenre of the 80s/90s Terminator rip-offs, but with a modern design and a better story that most of them.

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.

Formulaic pseudo-post apocalyptic film, with terrible action scenes and the flimsiest excuse of a plot, carelessly patched together by common myths infesting actual movies.

There's really little to none redeeming value in this.

1)As sci-fi it doesn't even compete; it raises no questions, introduces no new ideas, creates not even a shadow of an actual futuristic setting.

2)As a thriller it has no tension; nobody can summon the willpower to care for "characters" who systematically act out the most inane choices and the amateurish direction doesn't help.

3)The backbone of the plot is so.. safe, it feels like a sham. I'll occasionally stomach the pseudo-intellectual doctrine that passes for liberalism in Hollywood these days as long as it is attached to a 100M production. But in an independent production - and a sci-fi to boot - I expect to be presented with the unpopular opinion, the 'truth' that lacks recognition or exposure, not to be spoon-fed the mainstream dogma!

In any case there were a couple of decent lines - maybe even competent - so I'll give it a 2.

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.