It looks like Russell Crowe is ready for a renaissance. Although, I’ve been saying since The Nice Guys, so I might be wrong. And he is at a stage of his career where there is nothing left to prove and it’s nearly always the case that he is the highlight of each project. Crowe made The Pope’s Exorcist far more interesting than it would have been otherwise, and I hope they make five more. It’s just a matter of the right director believing in the actor’s natural gifts. This is exactly what attracted me to Sleeping Dogs, a film I could have imagined Crowe starring in, a disorienting noir that blends time, memories, perception within an unreliable narrator. While Crowe gives more than this dull picture deserves, it gets me worried that the Oscar winning actor almost goes to the other extreme, plunging into cheap VOD thrillers that many once selective actors like Travolta have succumbed to. Crowe is much better than Sleeping Dogs. So are most actors.
According to The Book of Mirrors by E.O. Chirafisi, “Sleeping Dogs” opens with it’s the main character Roy Freeman suffering severe dementia. Retired cop Roy Freeman (Crowe) has taped notes all around his house which not only instruct him how to operate literally the simplest of things such as a toaster, but even his own first and last name. Unsurprisingly, this is one of those narrative struggles, it is most ill advised in my opinion, which adds an undue level of injury to the “plausible but convenient.” Should and does it ever show up when the momentum is supposed to be building, the protagonist gets only as injured as the script allows. Roy also undergoes aggressive treatment that includes cutting open his head. The set up oats the makings of a traditional ‘whodunnit’ where a disgraced detective gets to re-investigate a case he has already shelved out of frustration thinking he has solved it. If one has ever bothered to look at a film, he will remember things even buried for a reason.
The motivation to begin the reinvestigation is the process of execution of Isaac Samuel aka Pacher Mzembi, who murdered and tortured a professor and researcher named Doctor Joseph Wieder over ten years ago. Samuel is clearly not the killer where would the flick be otherwise? and flashbacks of the movie inform us that he was present when Doctor Wieder was killed but did not manage to view the murder as it took place. Roy gets pulled again into a case, asking him questions about a close friend and ex-partner of the Posse, Jimmy Remis (Flanagan in ‘Grumpy Tough Guy’ mode). Remis is shamelessly telling Roy the same thing, that sweet revenge is the best motive. Understand? This is the movie’s title.
Roy, notwithstanding the fact that he is suffering from an illness that has ruined his life, makes the decision to reopen the case fully. His journey commences with the too quickly and conveniently deceased Richard Finn (Harry Greenwood), who attempted to pen a memoir narrative of sorts based on the Wieder murder. Another possible investigative partner to Laura Baines (Karen Gillam), Finn’s longtime partner, was also working with Wieder, and she is one of the people who could help to explain what happened that night. Through Cooper’s voice or through his eyes, the film does pause for a very long time in what can be described as a long flashback of weeks preceding the crime as seen through the perspective of Finn. We just never seem to know what amount of seriousness we should apply to it. For the simple reason that yes, writing which has Laura characterized as “one of those rare unicorns who knew everything about everything” simply cannot be taken as serious, and yes, there is always a chance that Finn is not talking facts, he is talking an absolute artistic impression of his craft or simply might not know the complete picture.
Writers, especially in reporting, have a great sense of humor and thus, it might be interesting to think of a systematically constructed case being built by a retired cop based on a dead man’s words in such a manner, however, in film language it’s the whole different world.
The work has a number of unreliably threaded script segments like Cooper and Bill Collage have presented in the ‘script sections’, and it almost appears as if the writers are at least partially justified in their mess since there is no clear reliable narrator around at all. Justifiable, yes, but also renders some scenes which absolutely make little sense and too much of which is overdone. For instance, as he works on a puzzle, Roy explains that it is an exercise, but at the same time he is quite literally reconstructing the puzzle of his head and the case. And then he explains that when doing a voiceover, Roy discusses a puzzle with a viewer who might be too stupid to understand what’s going on.
“Sleeping Dogs” is the type of film where a self proclaimed genius tries to popularize his findings on suppressed trauma as if it was his idea in the first place. Most of the actors perform in a monotone irritable way, almost chandeliers in several scenes, there is time almost every actor deep in concentration. As for Crowe, he seems lazy and annoyed soulless throughout the entire film, he manages to actually keep the audience engaged within sorry films. I can only wish “Sleeping Dogs” is a reason for an actor to change completely for the better and that he does not forget who he is.
For more movies like Sleeping Dogs visit 123Movies.