2307: Winter's Dream

source: 2307: Winter's Dream

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 ...

If you have nothing else to watch why not. The only thing that was really a problem for me in this movie was the Nazi female Marine.... did they come up with her script using fortune cookies? She is a terrible actor and that is just a flat out awful character. Watch if you must but this one is pretty painful.

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.

Coming from an Indy Sci Fi Film on a budget perspective, I thought it was interesting. Spaghetti Western in the snow.

The year is 2307 and the Earth has had 300 years of self induced winter, or maybe it was a meteor, but it is here. Humans live below the surface using geothermal energy near Phoenix. They have created a race of "black blood" humanoids to be our slaves, a group of "mules" that can not reproduce. Bishop (Paul Sidhu) had an infant child taken by humanoid Ash-393 (Branden Coles) and is out somewhere on the forbidden surface. It is now 5 years after the kidnapping. Bishop has a group with him, one is Kix (Arielle Holmes) who reads "Mein Kampf" and sees the Humanoids as people that need to be exterminated for the "Fatherland" regardless of the fact there is no "Fatherland." It also includes El Hatta (Kelcey Watson) who sports a thick Jamaican accent even though his ancestors have been with this small group of people for 8-9 generations. Not really explained, but a lot of things weren't explained like the trees and I have my doubts about the Northern Lights in Arizona even with a local magnetic disturbance. EMFs after 300 years? You watch people fight and kill and then 20 minutes from the end it twists with the film about over, Paul Sidhu was not an exciting protagonist, a man who is sad and quiet. Arielle Holmes had the only real personality and she was a Nazi. The scenario wasn't great and hard to grasp as they mix 'Brave New World" with an Ice Age apocalypse. In one scene they enter a room with a guy in a hood looking frozen at a table and I thought Star Trek "The Naked Time." 2 stars for the good flashback, not worth much more. Would have been better if there was a train circling the planet in the frozen background. Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity.

This movie felt like if they made the original Blade Runner, with a twist of Day after tomorrow, movie in today's cinematic, and political views. Now sorry everyone, I haven't read the book Blade Runner is based off of in a VERY long time, so I'm solely basing this off of the original Blade Runner movie. Paul Sidhu (II), who plays Bishop, the main character, is not only a really good actor, but his voice is so soothing. Even when hell is breaking loose, his smoothing like, don't pull that shit, attitude and voice reminds you it's all going to be ok. Arielle Holmes, who plays Kix, is a badass female solider who can hold her own with the boys. She just also happens to be a Nazi. No, I'm not kidding, she carries Mein Kampf with her, and reads it as gospel. I didn't expect the only female in the group to be a Nazi, but, she played the part well. I know, the thought of anyone doing a good job playing a Nazi is sickening... But just like in the past, when people needed someone to blame for their ills, that shit is going to keep happening until we all keep it from happening. But think about it, the world is in a ice age for like 300 years, pure humans are dying out, genetically alerted humans are in, and then we add in the humanoids that we created to be our slaves. Yeah, they're gonna come out of the wood work. Thankfully Kix gets what she deserves. Again, this is actually a really good movie. What happens when we finally drop that bomb and the world goes into a ice age? Who has a soul? Us, or the things we create. Is the pleasure model any less human than the slave model? Do the humans get to exterminate a whole group of creatures just because they created them? If those are questions you think of sometimes, I would suggest watching this movie. Hell, I suggest watching this movie even if you don't have those sorts of questions and you hated Blade Runner. The movie is about a hour and a half long, and its more then worth the time it takes to watch it. And, yes I know, I didn't go all that much into the plot, cause that would spoil way toooooo much, saying Kix is a Nazi is a big enough SPOILER. Sorry not sorry.

Forget that the acting is awful, the writing is formulaic and heavy handed...and forget that the main characters are an extremely poor rip off of Aliens, I think what bugged me the most about this movie is that I could never suspend disbelief enough to even enjoy it as a bad movie. OK, so it's supposed to be this post apocalyptic Earth that is now in a nuclear winter type ice age right? So in one scene they show a guy plunge his arm into a hole in the ice into the freezing water below, he has it submerged maybe 10 secs, when he pulls it out it's frozen rock hard and they need to use this little techno nonsense device to quickly thaw him out. So we're to believe that this specific water is somehow able to approach the temp of liquid nitrogen yet still remain liquid...uh what? Then literally 15 mins later they're trekking thru an ice storm looking for shelter, they've got all the high tech gear on yet none of them have their faces covered, they all have exposed skin. Hell, I've been on ski hills where you can get frostbite in a couple mins leaving skin exposed, especially with wind chill, but apparently in this frozen wasteland where water is super crazy cold, that doesn't matter.

They did not explain how the earth became too cold for life. They had a guy with some thick Jamaican(?) accent, which makes no sense for a bunch of people living in one spot all their lives. So, they tried a tiny bit to be Multi-cultural, I guess? As usual, all the leaders were men, which just doesn't stand up to historical trends, where men were the only leaders in a small percentage of places and times. The main problem with most post-apocalyptic stories is that a tiny community on the edge of starvation simply won't have the infrastructure or resources for developing, let alone maintaining, complex technology. Once we're knocked below a certain level, we won't have the infrastructure to rebound. That was a problem with The Matrix, and many other movies. It gives people false hope. Think of what goes into making a simple screw. First, the mining, then the transport, then the formation of the screw with enough consistency that we can use it anywhere. Except there are many different types of screws. We get knocked down, we'll be hard-put to even figure out how to make screws, let along humanoids. This is NOT science fiction. It's fantasy.