Sleep Dealer April 24, 2009 – Posted in: Aberrant Normalcy

Went with some usual suspects to see Sleep Dealer last night.  It’s a near-future SF film told in Spanish voice-over from the point-of-view of a Mexican corn farmer.  It’s a story of military-industrial complexes’ effect on indigenous culture, the very real story of how damns have whisked away some people’s entire way of life.  In Sleep Dealer, Mexicans no longer sneak into the U.S, they jack-in, legally, through a VR-like interface which allows them to control worker robots in America.  What’s great about this movie is the way it treats the tech: not as inherently evil or good, but somewhere blurry in between.  Though I could have used less voice-over narration, the plot doesn’t assume the viewer is a moron.  The movie, essentially, is a very solid SF story, the likes of which you might read in Asimov‘s or Interzone.  It felt good to see some non-U.S. SF.  If you get a chance to catch this flick, I highly recommend it.