I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
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Movie Reviews of I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
Movie Review: ATMOSPHERIC BRITISH NOIR
Summary: 4 Stars
I'LL SLEEP WHEN I'M DEAD (Paramount) is a Mike Hodges atmospheric, minimalist, English revenge drama. Taciturn, mysterious, Clive Owen ("Arthur") returns to London after a self-imposed exile as a peaceful woodsman. By chance, his younger brother has just committed suicide after being raped by Malcolm McDowell, an evil, arrogant, rich car dealer. Charlotte Rampling is Owen's former lover who warns him to leave and not seek revenge. But there'd be no movie if he did that and what follows is much more about what is not explicitly revealed or stated. The stylish images are carefully composed and the structure of this existential drama at times leans precariously toward the pretentious, but fine acting, cinematography and a very cool score rescue this moody English noir and make it worth checking out. No extras.
Movie Review: Excellent Crime Drama - Not Typical Though
Summary: 4 Stars
I really enjoyed this movie. Clive, as usual, is excellent and the premise is different and compelling. I'm so used to your typical American crime drama I kept waiting for every other scene to have a gun fight. From the average of reviews here I think most people were as well. It was a totally different flavor, decidedly English, and thats what made it interesting for me. The only think that kind of spoiled it for me was the romantic mismatch of Clive Owen and Charlotte Rampling. She's 18 years his senior in real life and while that can happen, its not likely.Movie Review: Quiet but interesting
Summary: 4 Stars
The Bottom Line:
Classifying this film as a thriller would probably create an anticipation of tension, of which there is very little, but if you take I'll Sleep When I'm Dead as a drama about a man investigating his brother's death (not unlike a modern day Get Carter) you might be pleased by the choices the film makes; it'll never be considered a gripping film but it's a decent one.
3/4
Movie Review: Love Clive Owens
Summary: 4 Stars
Sorry that I cannot actually review this DVD as the first copy I ordered would not play. Hoping that was a one time thing, I then ordered it from another eBay Seller and it, too, played about one minute and then became horribly scrambled and unwatchable. These were new, sealed products. I gave it a 4 as I simply enjoy watching Clive Owens, even when I can't.Movie Review: "It's all just grief...another wasted life"
Summary: 3 Stars
Male rape, and drug use are the predominant themes of this dark and somber revenge tale that takes place in the seamy, sordid London underworld. And while there's no doubt that I'll Sleep When I'm Dead looks slick, polished and elegant, the movie is also strangely old fashioned and rather dull. It doesn't really add anything new the genre, and much of what the viewer sees on the screen has all been done before; it's approximately 100 minutes of beautifully lit camera angles but with no actual substance.
The far from original story involves the settling of a score and the retribution of a once-powerful crime figure who returns from exile to investigate the death of his younger brother. But the twist is that the younger man committed suicide after being sadistically raped by a rich, gangland crime boss. Will Graham (Clive Owen) abandoned his career as a tough, no nonsense crime figure in the London underworld some years earlier. He now wonders throughout England scraggly and bearded in a beat up old camper van, taking odd logging jobs wherever he can find them.
Graham left behind his brother Davey (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). Davey has been leading the life of a playboy, seducing beautiful girls and also dabbling in the drug trade. Davey, obsessed with easy sex and easy money, sells ecstasy and coke at yuppie loft parties and blithely takes whatever he wants - cash from a wallet, and a cigarette lighter from a date's purse. One night Boad (Malcolm McDowell), a snarling white haired bully and a car dealer with apparently dark connections, brutally rapes Davey in a dark alley. This later precipitates Davy's suicide.
Sensing something is wrong, Will returns to London and soon learns of Davey's death from their mutual friend Mickser (Jamie Foreman). Will armed with Davey's autopsy reports sets out to discover why he killed himself and who may have perpetrated the rape. In the meantime, Will reconnects with his former girlfriend (Charlotte Rampling), a restaurant owner, who begs him to go to the police rather than seek retribution.
Emphasizing mood over content, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead has very little suspense, and what tension there is doesn't make the movie anymore compelling. The characters wonder around in grim-faced, existential angst, sitting in chauffer- driven cars and walking the subtly lit back streets of London in some kind of subliminal and subconscious daze. The picture is intended to be both opaque and obscure, but this just adds to the narrative confusion and uncertainty.
The players are all passable: Clive Owen does a good job at portraying his trademark tough, hard-hitting blankness, but mostly he just walks through the role. Sylvia Syms is effective in a small cameo as Davey's doddering and foolish landlady, but we're never sure what her relationship to Davey and Will actually is. The criminally underused Charlotte Rampling looks suitably grim and dour, although her character is kind of superfluous and she tends to over-interpret her small role.
I'll Sleep When I'm Dead really falls apart when it tries to become a kind of psycho-thriller, attempting to analyze and evaluate the psychological make-up of the male rapist. The movie does, however, effectively portray with a kind of no-nonsense and straightforward truth, London's sad disparity of wealth, and the fog of melancholy and menace that often seeps into many of its streets. Mike Leonard February 05.