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.

This was such a terrible film, almost a comedy sketch of a noir film.The budget was low compared to a blockbuster, but still higher than most.But its where they've decided to cut costs that is totally weird.Some actors are at least competent, while others look like they just been dragged off the street.One of them being the lead actor, hes so very bad that i cringed when ever he said anything (he talks through the ENTIRE movie).Then there's the weird costume choices.At the start of the movie all characters are wearing 1930's clothes.They drive a classic car, but the background is a modern day windfarm thats blatantly state of the art.And the costumes and some settings continue to follow this 30's film noir theme.Then BAM in drives a brand new escalade with 24 inch rims....WTF.Same thing again when a guy has a night scope on his rifle, you get a shot down its sight.Hes aiming at a guy with an mp5 and tactical gear on.In a even stranger contrast the locations are brilliant, and seem to have cost more than the rest of the entire film.The camera shots/angles a very good, and show these locations brilliantly in the scenes.The director has a keen eye for a good looking single shot, but no idea how to do much else.

People who should be shot for this film▼

The writer The director The casting agent The costume designer

People who should be tortured to death for their monotone, monotonous nails on chalk board voice.▼

Anton Pardoe- the lead actor, writer, producer If you ever seen the movie Hostel, i wish that would happen to this guy, but he doesn't escape.

The Perfect Sleep, while not a brilliant film does represent the ever-shrinking genre of watchable neo-noir. While it's certainly flawed, it lacks much of the intentional overly complex that robs many similar movies of their enjoyability (why watch a movie that's needlessly hard to follow?). Then again, it's not exactly a movie you can switch your brain off for.

Normally someone would put some sort of plot synopsis here, but if you've ever seen any type of noir film you know such an endeavor is pointless. They're usually a bit hard to follow and that can be part of their intrigue. Most noir-ish films rely heavily on the dialog (usually in ways that most people would never use in regular conversation), characters of moral ambiguity, and comparably lavish sets. The Perfect Sleep is no different, with the possible exception of most action sequences involving martial arts. Not sure I'd seen that before.

All in all the film comes out looking a lot like a seriously less flashy and more intelligent version of Sin City or The Spirit (the latter being complete garbage). That's actually a big plus for me as a fan of (some) noir films. While I enjoyed Sin City I always felt like it was just trying to do too much visually that took away from an arguably cool story, so that actually works well for me. Aside from the somewhat vague plot I'd say this would be at least enjoyable for fans of the genre. You don't see too many of these films these days and you see ever fewer done well.

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.