The Perfect Sleep

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.

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.

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.

I've just finished watching this... it's in my VLC player for two days. The main reason why it took me so long to go through it is that I find things that I love about it, and on the other hand I find things that I can't believe are so very poor and almost make vomit... and so this dichotomy makes the movie a hard piece to swallow.

I'll try to name a few of the negative aspects first:

1. The plot line seems confused and overly complex, and the poor graphic details of the movie make it pale and uninteresting to look at (which, if it where not the case, could help create interest on the viewer's part to keep pace with the strange and intricate family drama)

2. There are hardly any other actors apart from the characters; this means there are little to no extras, no population, no sense of society... all it looks like is a void and empty sequence of dark scenarios with little to no discerning features whatsoever... Making the whole thing a little too often look like a sequence of amateur theater shoots. In other words, the director and producers did not bother to put any effort into making the environment of the film credible. It isn't at any time delivering any kind of veracity to the possibility of the story ever finding an imaginable realm where it could take place.

3. Things don't seem too thought out. The main character is a prince, or some kind of bastard descendant of a ruler... but he does not behave like one. You can hardly piece together how he lived his life, why he is hunted down (right at the beginning), or why is his brother convinced that he is somehow responsible for his father's death. I mean... it doesn't feel like a noble family's intuitive dynamic at all, certainly not like the type on a Dostoievsky novel.

4. It looks like it's a student project, because the acting is so over the top, on a few of the parts... Other, elder, actors are brilliant. The difference is astounding. There seems to be no effort to push the younger actors into delivering a real credible performance. It feels very strange.

OK, on to the good parts:

1. The dialogs. They really present a vocabulary experience that is close to film noir classics, and and times is so poetic and powerful that it actually makes you think of Russian novels. It seems to be very well written throughout, but poorly executed. I almost need to close my eyes to the sad spectacle of the movie, to listen to the character's amazing discourse on some parts. The main character is poorly crafted, I thought... It lacked coherence in it's actions, some real sense of integrity, I feel the way it is both shown and interpreted is very silly, exaggerated and completely nonsensical.

2. Some of the acting is amazing, Tony Amendola especially! I rarely see such talent in an actor... he was the only one (maybe alongside Patrick Bachau) that picked up the text and brought it to a credible output... and he stands out brilliantly.

3. The fighting. Well, I thought fights here would be ridiculous... in the context of the dramatic feud that takes place through the plot. But in the end, they are quite contrary, almost the best this film has to show. They seem well rehearsed, well executed and choreographed, and look pretty cool. Too bad the scenarios in which they take place are so lame, and incoherent... Where it not for that, the fight scenes would be some of the most consistent I've seen.

4. The sense of sympathy. The core idea of this film seems to be so appealing, I can almost imagine this script beating the crap out of a Frank Miller adaptation of Sin City. I can compare this title to "The Spirit"... "The Spirit" has a million dollar budget, looks brilliant, but it's absolutely horrible (week and whack storyline, terrible acting, horrendously tedious and terrible directing), but "The Perfect Sleep" - if it had better and more consistent casting and directing - and the visual investments of "The Spirit" could have been a fabulous work of art. It feels like something that should be re-done by some serious experts, because I believe there would be much better ways of delivering the script.

In the end, it's hardly worth watching unless you don't have anything better to do. I hope this helped... My vote of 5 goes to the writers and the initial concept that could have been brilliantly executed, to the idea that could have been... And an incentive to Pardoe, who imagined it, to learn from this experience and do better next time.