I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

Will Graham (Clive Owen)is a former gangster boss who gave it all up out of disgust at wasting his life in crime, he now lives out of the back of a van and fleets from one anonymous job to the next, sometimes not speaking to another person for weeks on end. After losing his latest job as a forestry worker, he decides to ring his younger brother Davey (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) whom he left in London three years previous, but when he is unable to contact him, he heads for home. On arrival he finds that Davey has committed suicide, but Will is unconvinced and orders a separate independent autopsy, which reveals the shocking truth behind his death. After his success with Croupier, Hodges again returned to the crime genre, and again called on Owen as well as a host of familiar faces, not least Charlotte Rampling as the former love interest of Owen and Malcolm Mc Dowell as a car salesman with a penchant for rape. In a film that is light on dialogue, a strong acting style is required and Owen delivers in spades in a very downbeat role. Hodges even with a meagre budget manages to instill a fine sense of Noir and he manages to keep a tight grip on his actors who never resort to the histrionics that have marred other contemporary Brit Crime films. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead on the face of it has a lot in common with its directors debut, Get Carter, in that they both have their hero going home to find out what happened to their brother and the resulting revenge plot line, but they are quite different films, if anything this latest offering is even darker. Will Graham is a troubled man, coming to terms with his demons, he doesn't want to return to his former violent lifestyle, a lifestyle it must be said that is never alluded to, but the viewer is left in no doubt as fear of him is quite apparent from the faces and demeanour of other criminals who knew him. Some would argue the films ambiguous ending is a let down, I see it as a triumph, its rare to find films this brave, Hodges despite his checkered past is back on top form.

After the suicide of the small time drug dealer and thief Davey (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), his brother and former powerful gangster Will Graham (Clive Owen), who is living a peaceful recluse life trying to redeem himself from his past, returns to his homeland to investigate the motives for such desperate act. Will hires an independent autopsy and the coroner informs that Davey had been raped the night before his death. Will returns to his past life seeking for revenge.

"I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" is a deceptive thriller with an absolute absence of originality. In spite of having a great cast leaded by Clive Owen, Charlotte Rampling, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Malcolm McDowell, and a beautiful and stylish cinematography, the screenplay is very weak and confused, with a storyline similar to many other better movies. The characters are badly developed, and who they are and their motives are disclosed in a confused way. Further, the motives of Boad for the stupidity against Davey are unbelievably ridiculous. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil):" Vingança Final" ("Final Revenge")

Mood, texture and ambiguity in a British crime thriller? You better believe it. ISWID is no conventional revenge thriller. Mike Hodges, whose Get Carter is something of a gold standard for this kind of thing, subverts auidence expectations by producing a similar setup (a ganster related death, the vengeful brother returning to the city to find out what happened) and then proceeding to wrongfoot them by concentrating on the psychological fallout from crime rather than screen violence or genre cliches.

A moody Clive Owen plays Will Graham, a former London gangster who became so full of loathing for his life of murder and criminality that he has rejected it totally having moved away and left behind the trappings of organised crime. 3 years on he leads a reclusive, hermit like existence, surviving on odd jobs and living in the back of a van. When his younger brother Davy is raped by local hood Malcolm McDowell, he kills himself, an event that serves as the catalyst for Will's return to his former life as he attempts to find those responsible but perhaps more importantly why they did it.

This is a dark, thoughtful piece, less concerned with the usual revenge thriller trajectory than the psychological underpinnings of it's subject matter. It's unusual for this type of film to stop and reflect on events rather than just skip to the inevitable confrontation but Hodges pulls it off not least because his London backdrop is a sinister place where social and moral breakdown are continually in the background. The city has a contaminating effect from which Owen has tried to flee. Crime dehumanises everyone here, both victim and gangster. Much of the movie is about Owen's character attempting to resist a return to his former self but as he learns more about his brother's final hours the guard slips and over the course of the film he gradually transforms back to the killer he once was, culminating in a physical and material change toward the end of the film.

It's not a movie that gives you all the answers nor it does it give you everything you expect. You never find out what single event, if any, caused Owen to leave London so you're left to share in the confusion of those around him. It's also unclear what McDowell's relationship is to Rhys Meyers but this simply adds to the sense of unease. In every scene omission suggests hidden layers which force you maintain distance from the characters, making you a less emotion but more thoughtful observer. It could be anticlimatic for those expecting an orgy of bloody revenge, but Hodges would undermine the disguist registered by Owen's character for his violent past by indulging the voyeuristic demands of the audience to witness that violence. The film cuts away from it and introspectively explores its aftermath, not to mention its occasionally tragic inevitablility. Ambiguity is the watchword here because, Hodges suggests, you can't necessarily trust everything you see and hear. "Memories can deceive" Owen's voiceover tells us in the scene that bookends the film, and as everything that follows the introduction is effectively a flashback, we have to consider the possibility that certain scenes are misleading. The focus of the film intially seems to be the rape of Will's brother but this is the hook upon which Hodge's probes the lure and ultimately the consequence of crime. It won't be to everyone's taste but ISWID will have you scrutinising the detail long after you've left the cinema, something which can't be said for too many crime thillers these days.

An unsettling, thought provoking film. Recommended.

This is an old master's film, in which an aged director goes back to revisit the kind of story he excelled at when young, with dubious results. A more satisfying example of this kind of nostalgia would be John Frankenheimer's "Ronin," and if you had trouble with that one, you'll hate this one.

What Mike Hodges gives us here is a great wind-up and no pitch. London at night, endless shots of almost-human cars under the street lamps, a threatening bunch of thugs who never really thump each other, it all adds up to considerably less than a whole film.

Much has been made in these reviews about the film's ambiguity. I disagree. All the characters, and I mean all, are painfully aware and articulate about their motivations. Gloomy predictions are made about inevitable conflicts that never materialize, action is either cut short or cut away from. The whole thing is like a Michael Mann thriller with all the thrills scrupulously removed. Or perhaps Hodges is trying to reclaim the genre from Guy Ritchie's jokiness.

The script for this film must really have looked threadbare on the page. The dialog is obvious and arthritic. What works is the acting, the cinematography and the director's depressed atmospherics. Clive Owen demonstrates his considerable presence in a part that is intended to be a deliberate let-down. Charlotte Rampling is fascinating as always, more so than her lines. The rest of the cast ranges from good down to OK.

But in his determination to avoid clichés, the director has also managed to avoid incident, pace and interest. So a nice wind-up, but no pitch, no runs, no hits, and some calculated, deliberate errors.

Not predictable like most revenge dramas. Nice to see Clive Owen's character actually in love with someone his own age. Interesting music, if a little distracting. Very dark. Not a family flick. Not a date flick. Well written. Great acting by most characters. It was too short. It was a big build up to a very short denouement, but I guess that suits the tone and the theme of the film. Not sure why people gave this such low marks. I guess they were expecting Lock stock or snatch seeing as its kind of in the British gangster genre. If you go in expecting that, then you will be disappointed. What was great about this movie was that we slowly got to know the characters without much of significance being said about them outright. It was slow in creating a mood without ever being boring.