2307: Winter's Dream

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.

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.

I enjoy watching smaller budget and/or independent films, because when I find a gem, like this one, it is so exciting. It is amazing what can be accomplished with so little monies when "Hollywood" spends billions and still produces crap. No big name stars in this film, and the acting isn't perfect, but good enough to still get into the mood. The story is voiced over, so you get to know the main character, and some facts and back story about this time and world. The special affects believable, but the "laser" from their guns looks a little dated, the settings, however ,uniforms and equipment look futuristic. I loved the score! The music was VERY good! Unique in some places, and appropriate in all places. The movie is set at a good pace. The camera work excellent, showing creativity and having a variety of close ups/long shots. The editing was a bit sloppy in a few places but hardly noticeable. The story had a good foundation,and was interesting and full but did have a few holes. On the whole, I DO recommend this movie especially if you like posse type, action movies, with a futuristic post apocalyptic flavor. A very well done, quality small budgeted movie!!

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.

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.