Restore Point movie storyline. It’s the year 2041, and humanity has reached the point where it can cheat death. Anyone who dies an unnatural death has the right to be brought back to life. All you have to do is to create a backup of your personality – a restore point – at least every forty-eight hours. But there exists a movement of people who try to sabotage this concept.
Agent Em finds herself drawn into a case that is not as simple as it first seemed and the consequences of which reach to the highest levels of politics. Director Robert Hloz’s feature film debut is a gripping tale, an extraordinarily inventive visual experience, and a polemic with the idea that technological progress is always a good thing.
Restore Point (Czech: Bod Obnovy) is a 2023 cyberpunk science-fiction thriller film directed by Czech director Robert Hloz in his directorial debut. The film was co-produced by the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Serbia.
Restore Point premiered on July 3, 2023, at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Its screenings began at the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival the following day. Subsequently the film was also shown at the Fantasia International Film Festival in late July and early August 2023. The film was released in Czech cinemas on September 21, 2023. XYZ Films was named as distributor in various markets (including the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany or Austria).
Film Review for Restore Point
pparently the first sci-fi film from the Czech Republic in 40 years, this so-called Czech Blade Runner is actually equally indebted to Minority Report (whose domestic futurism continues to be quietly influential). Like Tom Cruise’s character in Steven Spielberg’s film, detective Em Trochinowska (Andrea Mohylová) is a cop prone to brooding over clips of an absent loved one. Her concert pianist husband was murdered by members of the Rivers of Life terrorist group, who are outraged by the nature-flouting “restoration” technology that allows any recently snuffed person to be resurrected.
Bad news for those who don’t clear out their inboxes regularly: the technology only works if you have bothered to upload your memories within the last 48 hours. Where Minority Report riffed on the notion of pre-crime, this is a post-crime insurance in a Mitteleuropean dystopia awash in violence.
Trochinowska is called to investigate a double “absolute murder” of a couple who have been oddly remiss about backing up: restoration scientist David Kurlstat (Matěj Hádek) and his wife. Resident tech demigod Rohan (Karel Dobrý), who is head of the institute that invented it all and mindful of an upcoming privatisation, is unhelpful. So a strong whiff of corruption is emanating from those glittering brutalist towers.
Robert Hloz’s directorial debut is certainly good-looking for a $2m (£1.6m) film, nailing the hyper-metropolis vistas and ubiquitous glassy wearables expected of the near-future dystopian idiom. But however slick-looking the interface, under the hood it is bolted together from so many borrowed parts – including Blade Runner’s preoccupation with unreliable memory – that it forgets to locate its own philosophical kernel.
Hloz overcompensates instead with a needlessly byzantine plot – in which a Europol agent (Václav Neužil) encroaches on Trochinowska’s sleuthing – and a vehement, airless performance style across the board. Mohylová, supposedly the emotional linchpin, comes across as robotic – and not in an enigmatic Rick Deckard way. A valiant stab nonetheless at equalling Hollywood futurescapes, Restore Point should stave off cyber-noir cravings for a couple of hours. It’s a competent copy but unmistakably synthetic.
Restore Point (2023)
Bod Obnovy
Directed by: Robert Hloz
Starring: Andrea Mohylová, Matěj Hádek, Václav Neužil, Milan Ondrík, Karel Dobrý, Agáta Kryštůfková, Katarzyna Zawadzka, Kristina Kurlstatova, Jan Vlasák, Iveta Dušková
Richard Stanke [cs; sk] as Richard
Adam Vacula [cs] as Peter Trochinowski
Jan Jankovský as Jan Zima
Screenplay by: Tomislav Cecka, Zdenek Jecelin
Production Design by: Ondrej Lipensky
Cinematography by: Filip Marek
Film Editing by: Jarosław Kamiński
Costume Design by: Ivan Stekla
Art Direction by: Milos Cibulec
Music by: Jan Šléška
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: XYZ Films (Worldwide)
Release Date: July 3, 2023 (Karlovy Vary), September 21, 2023 (Czechia)
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