Restore Point review – Czech Blade Runner is a valiant attempt to satisfy cyber-noir cravings
Apparently 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 StevenSpielberg’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 is on digital platforms in the UK from 1 April