The Perfect Sleep

Film Noire is a genre that requires a certain level of tact, cleverness, intellect, and imagery. This movie has none of that, though they really tried hard with the imagery.

It's the kind of movie that your cousin Marky the dump truck driver, who's always talking about how he's going to make it big in the movies someday, would make.

The dialogue is wooden and lifeless. The visuals, while obviously expensive to make, are the work of a director who has tried to be clever and failed miserably due to a severe lack in cerebral ability. The acting ranged from sub-par to just plain bad. The story might have been salvaged by a real writer and director, but I suspect that such people would not have touched it with a barge pole.

About 1/4 of the way through, I noticed striking similarities with the scene in Sim0ne where Viktor, desperate to be rid of his actress, makes the world's worst movie. I figured I'd check IMDb to see if a similar effect has occurred in this movie, and to my surprise it has. I'd almost be tempted to give a 2 out of 10 just because it's exposed the pretentious groupies, but I won't. It's that bad.

Overall, I enjoyed the film. I think it is a fine example of modern Film-Noire. It's true, the plot is a little too vague, the lack of societal context reduces it's sense of authenticity and realism, and the voice-over narration could have been used less or perhaps eliminated completely. Overall though, it's a great mood piece and visually sumptuous and stunning. The beautiful Ms. Sanchez allowed me to feel the pain of her relationship with the hero. This film had a lot of potential to be a true masterpiece, but the flaws bring it down to the level of great genre piece. I would highly recommend it to fans of the genre, but, it's not a film I would recommend to the casual viewer.

Imagine Diane from Cheers, the self centered over intellectualizing character, now imagine she was trying to make a film moire movie. This would be it. If you just looked at some of the shots without any sound you would think Hmmm.. this could be a good film.

Now if you turn on the sound and listen for anytime at all you quickly realize that the person that made the film knows nothing about films beyond what they read in a book. I was continually thinking is this thing a foreign film, it was that bad.

If you don't remember Cheers, then think of Mr. Beans Holiday... remember the DeFoe character that made the horrible movie... well imagine that horrible movie without Mr. Bean saving it. That is what this movie is. I'm not saying anything about what the movie is other than it is an attempt to make a dark moody film about a hit-man going back home.... at least that's about all I could get out of it.

This is the first time I feel the need to comment on IMDb, to write some sort of a review and, as it so often happens, it's not because of a really excellent film, but a truly appalling one.

Take the narrating style the youngest might relate to the Max Payne video game series, a cast of virtually unkonwns (which is not a bad thing in itself), poor dialogs, some dark scenes but not many enough, and make a film out of it. Don't worry about the bad acting, the length (way too long), the lack of immersion (the lead character has to be one of the lest interesting I've seen in a long time - couldn't care less if he died) or the often ridiculous solutions they find to certain problems the lead character finds himself in.

I wouldn't have written anything if it hadn't been for another review here, giving it 10 stars. I gave it four, but maybe three is closer to what I feel about it. Not only do I not wish to see it again, but the mere thought of it takes me dangerously close to wanting to kill myself. Oh, and a so called noir film is nothing without a good soundtrack - not the case here. The ending song sounds like it was more suitable to a western movie.

It's not romance, it's not action, it's not noir, it's not good. That would be my review if it weren't for the minimum of 10 lines.

The Perfect Sleep is a prime example of a B-movie film noir. It recalls the methods of Tarantino in that its direction shows a love for movie making. Unfortunately the downs of this outweighs the ups.

What we have here is a deliciously gorgeous picture, well shot, but also equipped with a screenplay which tries too hard to be something that is out of reach. The story is convoluted, messy, with pretentious dialogue, and too many characters whose functions are minimal. It is a delightful film to look at, but an impossible one to invest in. It is as if the makers of The Perfect Sleep would rather have the viewers acknowledge that they are watching a movie rather than be involved.

I enjoyed watching one illustruious image after another, but I could not follow this movie at all. The Perfect Sleep is basically a film that likes to show off, but not everything gets through to us.