Fans of American science fiction movies usually attack or dismiss with viciousness any attempt within this genre by foreign film industries, when in fact the products are sometimes more original or daring than American formulas. However, the influence of this industry (especially from Los Angeles) has been so reinforced with adrenaline shots, given the accumulation of ships, aliens and star wars, that foreign filmmakers mimic those models. Products of recent years, such as the Russian «Attraction», the Swedish «QEDA» or this first Swiss sci-fic film, owe a lot to American cinema.
In «Cargo» the issue almost reaches the limits of plagiarism of two Ridley Scott classics: the comparison with «Alien» is inevitable, but it also has a lot of «Blade Runner» (including the name of the character Decker , not a far echo from Harrison Ford's Deckard in that one). There is also some stuff derivative of «The Matrix», in the simulation of an alternative paradise life on another planet; and the rebels on war in the «Star Wars» style.
In this story, the Earth has become uninhabitable. Humans are wandering beings; without the planet they decimated, they are entities that live in space stations; or, in the case of the wealthiest, on the planet Rhea, where everything looks like a shampoo commercial. But it is a secret that the attempt to populate it was a fiasco, discovered by a woman doctor who, to save and be able to visit her sister in Rhea, accepts an eight-year job in a cargo ship that transports a strange shipment to a supposed base and inside which a stowaway travels.
The film works well until the resemblance to «Alien» runs out (luckily, there is no alien on board), so we enter the numerical universe of «Matrix»", overloaded with explanations that slow down the action or make it incomprehensible with so much cyber talk.
A good cast helps, as also do efficient visual effects, good art direction and cinematography, but a little cutting would have been very good. I remember very bad independent movies , that I saw in my adolescence («Journey to the Seventh Planet», «The Angry Red Planet» or «Queen of Outer Space») in which things were resolved in less than 90 minutes and we all would leave the cinema hyperventilated. Some of that would have been good for this attempt at "space revolt".
In «Cargo» the issue almost reaches the limits of plagiarism of two Ridley Scott classics: the comparison with «Alien» is inevitable, but it also has a lot of «Blade Runner» (including the name of the character Decker , not a far echo from Harrison Ford's Deckard in that one). There is also some stuff derivative of «The Matrix», in the simulation of an alternative paradise life on another planet; and the rebels on war in the «Star Wars» style.
In this story, the Earth has become uninhabitable. Humans are wandering beings; without the planet they decimated, they are entities that live in space stations; or, in the case of the wealthiest, on the planet Rhea, where everything looks like a shampoo commercial. But it is a secret that the attempt to populate it was a fiasco, discovered by a woman doctor who, to save and be able to visit her sister in Rhea, accepts an eight-year job in a cargo ship that transports a strange shipment to a supposed base and inside which a stowaway travels.
The film works well until the resemblance to «Alien» runs out (luckily, there is no alien on board), so we enter the numerical universe of «Matrix»", overloaded with explanations that slow down the action or make it incomprehensible with so much cyber talk.
A good cast helps, as also do efficient visual effects, good art direction and cinematography, but a little cutting would have been very good. I remember very bad independent movies , that I saw in my adolescence («Journey to the Seventh Planet», «The Angry Red Planet» or «Queen of Outer Space») in which things were resolved in less than 90 minutes and we all would leave the cinema hyperventilated. Some of that would have been good for this attempt at "space revolt".