2307: Winter's Dream

The film is set 300 years in the future in a post-apocalyptic world that has completely frozen over. It begins in an underground city, which is the world's last remaining population centre. Noids (or Mules), which are genetically modified humans, are bred to work. A number of the Mules have "gone rouge", and one Mule, involved in one particular event, leads to a military team of four people being sent on a mission across the frozen wasteland to eliminate him.

This film has some problems. Some of the acting is a little poor. There are plot holes. It sometimes seems that essential dialogue is edited out of scenes. I get the impression that the film has been cut down a great deal. It moves far too quickly. At the beginning of a scene, long shots and positioning shots, instead of being lingered on, flash before us for an instant. There is also some fairly untidy camera work. It also seems that the whole film has been dubbed and everyone sounds like they are speaking in a small room, which I think might actually be the reason you get the impression of poor acting.

That said, this is a credible movie. The story moves on at such a fast pace that the film's 101 minutes could easily stretch to 130. The film certainly has its foundations in good, solid sci-fi. The Mules could be straight out of Brave New World. There are some great plot twists. There are some decent sets. The effects are, with some exceptions, quite good as well. I got the impression that towards the end, the film seemed to sharpen up a little. The plot, especially the ending, was very good.

If you can forgive this film its failings, and it has many, you have a pretty good sci-fi yarn. Very similar to, but not quite like, anything that has gone before.

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.

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 ...

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".