Realive (2016) Reviews

• Thoughtful Science Fiction

  claudio_carvalho2017-05-14

  When Marc Jarvis (Tom Hughes) is diagnosed of an incurable throat cancer, the plans his life to commit suicide and keep his body cryogenically frozen in the Progeny Company awaiting for technology to revive. In 2084, he becomes the first man to be successfully revived by Dr. West (Barry Ward) and his team. The nurse Elizabeth (Charlotte Le Bon) helps Marc in his recovery and he learns that his beloved lover Naomi (Oona Chaplin) did the same expecting to live with him in the future. However Marc finds previous fails in the project with several casualties. Further, he is losing his only belongings – his memories – and he does not recover his previous health. Out of the blue, Marc takes a decision for Naomi and him. "Realive" is a thoughtful sci-fi by Mateo Gil, the writer of the magnificent "Abre los Ojos". The story is interesting, approaching themes like ethics, afterlife without the original memories, adaptation to a future society with different moral and behaviors and so on. However the narrative is too cold despite the intriguing screenplay and the film does not work well. Marc Javis and Naomi should have been better developed in the beginning in order to make these characters likable. The hot Charlotte Le Bon is also wasted in a very limited character. Anyway, the story is original and provides a different view of immortality that makes the viewer think. My vote is six. Title (Brazil): Not available

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• More philosophy than sci-fi, true, but not lacking in the sci either

  littleitaly-715102017-10-07

  So, a lot of people went into this movie expecting to be dazzled by hi- tech conceptualizations of the future, and were disappointed. That's understandable. The tech is a background at best, although every character does seem to blend seamlessly with it. It is a background that is tastefully crafted, realistically employed and never flickers. To add insult to injury, however, the 2 hour hypotech is stuffed with sentimentality and philosophy, rather than action and sex, as many sci- fi's are. For most people, action and sex are a far better filler than the heartfelt musings of a struggling soul, regardless of the context. For those of us not seeking to escape to the future, we were treated to a salient, cerebral wine-tasting, of sorts...and a sobering one at that. The film seems to offer up so many spiritual, cultural messages, from so many vantage points, that it's impossible to label one bottle and drink from it. For the single-minded it's a mess. For others, it's an awakening to new flavors of suffering, and a perversion of our taste buds. Some things, once sweet on our tongue, now stain with an aftertaste. Other drinks, like death, may now crisply tinkle in the glass and repel us a bit less. All I'm saying is that this film is more art than entertainment. Some people drink wine to get drunk and have sex. Others sip it carefully to explore its variety. Realive is certainly a film for the sipping class.

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• Something in recent sci-fi that's not completely ridiculous

  Crankgorilla2017-10-19

  Something of a mood piece leaning toward gattica over trek in styling and pace, it's a good one to watch when you've seen almost everything and have a cold or for whatever reason get stuck indoors. It's more mature sci-fi instead of talking rodents and giant smurfs. Considering a movie has such a short time to convey complicated ideas, this film is put together well and shoots and hits at more of those targets than one would expect. Presentation is good on all fronts. The lead role could have been written for anyone really, male or female and they had to choose one particular lifestyle to represent the story and the one they chose was OK, but some wont like it. This is a movie that could have gone longer in many directions. The actual science of it all was done well and can serve as an example of a direction that could have gone longer. That's what a good movie does. Makes you want more. A once watch flick that makes an impact. I'll buy it for the box art and put it on my recommend list.

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• A muddled yet thought provoking story on bioethics, cryonics, and immortality

  vibratoguy2017-05-13

  This movie opens up a Pandora's box of unexpected outcomes for a man who receives a death sentence from cancer and seeks the hope and promise of cryonics science to keep himself from fading into nothingness. Like the sci-fi movie Ex Machina, Realive explores the ramifications of mankind 'playing God' and what hardships, acceptable failures and yes human suffering would be necessary in order to accomplish the dream of basically conquering death. The lead character discovers that putting faith in science to resurrect you to a life that may be vastly different from that which you were given from birth, may not be preferable to the finality and peacefulness of death itself. Will science be able to reconstitute the recipe that makes you the whole person you are? Or will science recreate merely a vestige of who you were such that the person that emerges after being unfrozen and rebuilt is a complete stranger? Or worse, what if what is re animated is merely an empty, 'souless' 'spiritless' wonder? There are things worse than death. Now if science could account for all the vastness of what makes me who I am and recapture all that for me after freezing and being thawed out, that might be something to consider. But as the main character discovered he was resurrected into an existence that was a far cry from the life he had known both in terms of function and identity.

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• The Perils of Reanimation

  alisonc-12016-07-27

  Marc Jarvis (Tom Hughes) is a rich, young, successful artist who is suddenly told that he has cancer and has at most a year to live. He decides to freeze his body in the hopes that future medicine can cure him, but his girlfriend Naomi (Oona Chaplin) is horrified that he means to take his own life in order to ensure that his body is in as good condition as possible when he dies. Nevertheless, he does just that… only to wake up some 60 years later; Dr. West (Barry Ward) and his team have learned, through trial and error, how to reanimate frozen humans. Marc is their first complete success, and with the help of nurse/assistant Elizabeth (Charlotte Le Bon), Marc struggles to find meaning in his new existence, while his long-ago past still pulls at his heart…. I'm not sure why this is a Spanish film as it's in English and features British actors; but, no matter. It's a really thoughtful science fiction film that addresses not only technological advances but the moral and ethical problems associated with them. I very much liked Tom Hughes (who looks a bit like Cillian Murphy) because he was able to take his character through a very complex maze of emotional realities; then again, everybody in this film is good. Interestingly, the problem of how to portray the future was solved by simply having Marc remain in the facility in which he was reborn, because his body was not strong enough (yet) to adapt to outside conditions; a neat explanation that means the viewer isn't taken out of the picture by seeing a future world that looks cheesy or contrived or otherwise unnatural. Well done, filmmakers!

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