IMDb RATING
6.0/10
6.8K
YOUR RATING
The near future. Like tomorrow. In a world marked by closed borders, corporate warriors, and a global computer network, three strangers risk their lives to connect, break through the barrier... Read allThe near future. Like tomorrow. In a world marked by closed borders, corporate warriors, and a global computer network, three strangers risk their lives to connect, break through the barriers of technology, and unseal their fates.The near future. Like tomorrow. In a world marked by closed borders, corporate warriors, and a global computer network, three strangers risk their lives to connect, break through the barriers of technology, and unseal their fates.
- Awards
- 6 wins & 8 nominations total
Featured reviews
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
7/10
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
'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.
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.
Did you know
- TriviaWilhelm Scream - When man falls off of horse in the first sequence where Memo is watching TV (after "Are Your Nodes Dirty?")
- GoofsWhen Memo, at work operating the robot, helps the worker next to him who collapses, he is not wearing the contact lenses that he needs to operate the robot. (He did not have time to take them out.)
- ConnectionsReferenced in Film Junk Podcast: Episode 238: Zombieland (2009)
- How long is Sleep Dealer?Powered by Alexa
Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
- Official site
- Languages
- Also known as
- Торговець сном
- Filming locations
- Metepec, Mexico(location)
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $2,500,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $80,136
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $35,050
- Apr 19, 2009
- Gross worldwide
- $107,559
- Runtime1 hour 30 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1
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