Sleep Dealer

This is a movie that could have made a really tough and biting commentary on globalization, immigration, media, and the privatization of natural resources. Instead they let all that take a back seat to a sort of love story and a sort of sub plot about a pilot with guilt over killing an innocent person.

The story is as follows, Memo, who lives in a small Mexican town dreams of bigger things. He builds a radio of sorts that allows him to listen in to phone calls, that is until he listens in on the wrong one and the conglomerate finds out and on live television blows his house up with his father inside. He leaves for Tijuana to make money for the family while the pilot tries to find out more about the mission he had just done. That's when it sort of jumps into "The Matrix" people can have "nodes" put in that let them physically be on an Internet, they can sell memories, be connected to a machine in the US that does manual labor while the Mexicans stay safely in their own country (biting right, sort of a bitch slap to the US) The problem is they never flesh it out and make it a problem, the people are all to happy to just go along with it. He has a sore spot about his father, and its brought up, but not well enough that his father was never the same after they put a damn in the town he's from and charge people insane amounts for water (not to far from the truth, and that is the truth in certain places)

The problem is they never focus on that enough. Instead they deal with a pretty boring love story, and an equally boring subplot of the pilot. They seemed to have enough money for decent effects, but not enough for good effects. The story and images work the best when its real sets with the strange equipment they use to tap into this virtual world. The art direction and sets were for the most part really interesting.

It just wasn't a complete movie, maybe it work better as a mini series, or a show where they can fully draw out all the messages they want to say. Acting was okay but not great, and the way it was shot was for the most part just adequate. 6/10 stars.

Director: Alex Rivera

Starring: Luis Fernando Pena, Leonor Varela, Jacob Vargas