SLEEPERS
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Director: Barry Levinson Time: 96 min Country: USA Date: 1996 |
The
first thing you need to know about Sleepers is that it's based on a novel
by Lorenzo Carcaterra that was allegedly based on a true story. The movie
repeats this bogus claim, which was attacked and determined by a wide majority
to be misleading. Knowing this, Sleepers can be a problematic movie
because it's too neat, too clean, too manipulative in terms of legal justice and
dramatic impact to be truly convincing. And yet, with its stellar cast directed
by Barry Levinson, the movie succeeds as gripping entertainment, and its tale of
complex morality--despite a dubious emphasis on homophobic revenge--is
sufficiently provocative. It's about four boys in New York's Hell's Kitchen
district who are sent to reform school, where they must endure routine sexual
assaults by the sadistic guards. Years after their release, the opportunity for
revenge proves irresistible for two of the young men, who must then rely on the
other pair of friends (Brad Pitt, Jason Patric), a loyal priest (Robert De Niro),
and a shabby lawyer (Dustin Hoffman) to defend them in court. Despite the
compelling ambiguities of the story, there's never any doubt about how we're
supposed to feel, and the screenplay glosses over the story's most difficult
moral dilemmas. And yet, Sleepers grabs your attention and pulls you into
its intense story of friendship and the price of loyalty under extreme
conditions. The movie's New York settings are vividly authentic, and Minnie
Driver makes a strong impression as a long-time friend of the loyal group of
guys