Restore Point
Directed by Robert Hloz
Written by Tomislav Čečka, Robert Hloz, & Zdeněk Jecelín
Starring Andrea Mohylová, Matěj Hádek, Václav Neužil
Unrated
Runtime: 115 minutes
Now playing on demand

by Clayton Hayes, Staff Writer

By pure coincidence, Restore Point is the third Czech film I’ve seen in the past week. After what feels like years, I finally crossed Věra Chytilová’s 1982 social comedy Calamity (Kalamita) and Jindřich Polák’s 1963 sci-fi classic Ikarie XB-1 off of my watchlist. I’ll not be making the argument that either of these are direct antecedents to Robert Hloz’s first feature film, but it is always good to bear in mind the long cinematic history of the Czech Republic. Restore Point seems to be drawing on sci-fi cinema from this side of the Atlantic though, with its most obvious influences being Blade Runner and Minority Report.

To be honest, I wasn’t particularly enamored with the near-future world conjured up by production designer Ondřej Lipenský and VFX supervisor Michal Křeček: its clean and minimalist aesthetic owes more to Spielberg’s film than Scott’s. That aside, it’s hard to overstate just how deftly the world-building is handled. The visual effects are, for the most part, understated and built on physical props that are used to add depth to the film’s characters. The “restore drive” props offer a great example: about the size of two smartphones sandwiched together, each character gets their own drive with a unique appearance. Most that we see are sleek, Apple-inspired affairs, but several characters get chunkier cases with a more utilitarian feel.

Another high point in the film was a sequence in the seedy underbelly of Restore Point’s digital utopia. It has the more grimy, cobbled-together Blade Runner aesthetic that is much more my speed, and I really wish the film had spent more time exploring similar spaces. There’s a weird little guy who only communicates via a digital readout on his grill! Give me more of that!

Lipenský–who was art director for Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit and is working in the same role on Robert Eggers’ upcoming Nosferatu–and Křeček–who has been VFX supervisor on productions as varied as Disney’s live-action Aladdin remake and rom-com Red, White, and Royal Blue–aren’t the only experienced hands that have their fingerprints on Restore Point. Its first AD, Marek Juráček, has an extensive list of international credits, and editor Jarosław Kamiński has worked on multiple Oscar-nominated features.

The film avoids the exposition dumps that so often plague other films in the same genre and really seems to have taken the adage “show, don’t tell” to heart. This demonstrates a surprising level of sophistication in a screenplay by three relative newcomers to the sci-fi genre, with only Zdeněk Jecelín having a writing credit beyond short films and TV. The blending of the writers’ genre sensibility with the crew’s filmmaking experience have resulted in a really fun and interesting ride.

Where things fall down, though, is in the “noir” half of this sci-fi noir. Restore Point’s central mystery just isn’t particularly mysterious, and the average viewer will likely unravel its threads in the first 45 minutes or so. And while it tries to evoke the oppressive sense of paranoia and uncertainty of films like Blade Runner and Minority Report, it never quite feels up to the task. Those films are laser-focused on a single character, the detective, played perfectly by Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise. Restore Point doesn’t give its detective Em, played by Andrea Mohylová, the same opportunity, saddling her instead with an amnesiac sidekick who soaks up a significant amount of narrative focus. Mohylová doesn’t have many acting credits to her name, so perhaps there was some concern about resting the film on her shoulders, but I wish that the filmmakers had gone that route.

Even more of an issue is that, unlike with the rest of the technology that populates the world of Restore Point, there’s no “showing” of Restoration until very late in the film. It’s an unfortunate mishandling of what is, as evidenced by the film’s title, the technology that is narratively most important. All of the emotional stakes of the film rely on the audience connecting with the implications of being able to “restore” dead people back to life as long as they’ve set a “restore point” (i.e., backed up their brain) within the past 48 hours. The film makes a few attempts at showing this early on, with its opening sequence and later as Em is shown around the Restoration Institute, but it’s with throwaway characters. For it to have the lasting impact the filmmakers needed, it should have been Em or someone close to her that needed to get “restored.”

All that being said, it’s great to see a film like Restore Point come essentially out of nowhere. Blade Runner and Minority Report are exceptionally high bars to clear, and the fact that it’s inviting those comparisons feels like a huge win for this filmmaking team. I enjoyed it and I’m looking forward to seeing more from everyone involved.