FANTASIA23 REVIEW: Bod obnovy [Restore Point] [2023]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 115 minutes
Release Date: September 21st, 2023 (Czech Republic) / February 9th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: XYZ Films
Director(s): Robert Hloz
Writer(s): Tomislav Cecka, Robert Hloz & Zdenek Jecelin

Everything we say and think is used against us every day.

As the current climate evolves into increased violence, the future setting of Robert Hloz’s Restore Point delivers a solution. It’s a technology that provides a way to revive those whose time to die was forced upon them by another. As long as you remember to download a back-up of your consciousness and memories, the taxpayer-funded institute led by Dr. Rohan (Karel Dobrý) can bring you back. His machine restores your body of its wounds before uploading your save file, allowing you to continue your life with nothing but a few hours of blank space.

The crucial catch to screenwriters Tomislav Cecka and Zdenek Jecelin’s plot is that Rohan cannot legally use any back-ups more than forty-eight-hours old. That’s the cutoff point for “rejection.” Think of the raw data of your mind as an organ being transplanted into your body. It will always be younger than its host and thus an anomalous intrusion to be fought against. So, you must be diligent. You must always remember to upload just in case. And don’t forget: one person’s grace period to allow themselves the oft bout of forgetfulness (or laziness) is another’s loophole. Those forty-eight hours separate salvation from absolute death.

We learn about this duality from a lone wolf detective who knows it all too well. Em Trochinowska’s (Andrea Mohylová) husband was killed by a terrorist organization seeking to free humanity from the prison of state-sanctioned immortality. Known as the River of Life, the group murders innocents to prove a counter-intuitive point whereby it instills the fear that no one is safe while also bolstering the importance of Kohan’s work—enough for him to take the company private as a means of “advancing their mission” (increasing profits). Unlike past attacks, however, they’ve finally caught their mistake. Rather than let their work be erased, they now only pull the trigger after their victim’s copy expires.

A web of intrigue stemming from Rohan’s chief scientist David Kurlstat (Matěj Hádek) and his wife being the latest “martyrs” ensues as Em once again hopes to use the hunt for a killer to single-handedly stop River of Life completely. It’s precisely this drive to shirk the rules for a personal agenda that endears her to untrustworthy figures and not those protected by said rules. Enter an illegal copy of Kurlstat (missing the six months of memories leading to his death), a suspected terrorist (Milan Ondrík’s Viktor), and a cavalier Europol agent (Václav Neužil’s Mansfield), each leading to more and more secrets that blur the line between good and evil where it comes to wealth and God-complexes.

There’s ample lore to work through as far as understanding the overall world on-screen, but it’s so close to our own capitalist wasteland that catching the drift shouldn’t be difficult. The dynamic built between this technology and how it fits into a social hierarchy fueled by profit is similarly easy to comprehend. That means we can devote our energy to getting to the bottom of the more specific mystery. Who benefits most from a group like River of Life? Why is Viktor willing to turn himself in as long as he’s guaranteed a “fair trial”? The answers to these questions are hardly unique, but the journey towards proving them never ceases to entertain.

A lot of that has do to with a solid lead turn from Mohylová—ever cautious and skeptical enough to tread lightly with the often-overwrought characters surrounding her. But there’s also the fantastic production design that truly excels beyond obvious budgetary limitations as ingenious art direction expertly turns contemporary items futuristic in lieu of fabricating everything fresh. This is apparently Czechia’s first sci-fi feature in forty years and thus a testament to everyone involved that it proves a worthy return to the genre. It may feel by-the-numbers in scope, but its execution more than makes up the difference.