The idea of save points and extra lives is an increasingly well-worn trope in cinema, to the point that a film called Restore Point summons Edge of Tomorrow meets Groundhog Day visions of endless action scenes of kill:die:repeat. However, what Robert Hloz’s film actually offers up is a terse and suspenseful, ice-cold Euro-cyberpunk noir detective film which manages to create the edge-of-the-seat tension even in a world where death is (at least theoretically) not fatal.
Introspective and brooding, Andrea Mohylová plays police detective Em Trochinowska, a troubled woman with a poor attitude to teamwork, who has to investigate both an anti-restoration terrorist group and the unusual ‘absolute murder’ of a couple (where neither motives nor murderer are quite what they seem). The plot itself is hardly groundbreaking, but the central performances are nuanced and filled with enough moral grey to sustain the suspense as the plot slowly unfolds.
What is most outstanding is the near future world-building, with a mix of brutal futurist architecture and holographic police tape, alongside subtle touches in everyday gadgetry that are immersively believable and practicable, rather than just flashy CGI and set design. This depth feels similar to Children of Men, but with a more clinically dystopian feel, where elegant middle European architecture is still preserved beneath towering glass ziggurats and wooded countryside survives between endless fields of solar cells and forests of oil derricks. Props for atmosphere should also go to Jan Sléska’s score that veers from elegant heart-breaking cello to pulsing sub bass electro.
Controlled, nuanced and tense, Restore Point is not what we expected but is an excellent take on cyberpunk from a middle-European perspective.
RESTORE POINT is out now to rent/buy digitally
