Le limier - Sleuth

The most important thing when you watch this film is to avoid any comparison with the 1972 classic. Not easy I grant you but essential if you want to enjoy this film on any level. Any comparison will not be favourable to this version.

There is an obvious attempt to give this film an ultra modern feel by employing huge amounts of high-tech gadgets and having sleek metal and chrome surfaces on display throughout the house. Kenneth Branagh has made use of various techniques such as showing the action through security cameras and filming from different angles to give this film a unique look. However, none of these things are a problem. There is a slightly excessive use of swear words which does give the impression that the writer was trying desperately to engage a younger audience through any means necessary.

The first half of this film is engaging enough and follows the plot of the original pretty closely. However, the second half is a bit of a mess. Jude Law's performance is laughable and there is a homosexual undercurrent that has no place in the plot and is in fact very damaging to the credibility of the film. The ending is abrupt and totally devoid of tension.

This film is worth a look but don't expect too much. Michael Caine takes on the role of the rich and bitter Andrew Wyke and plays it very well with no attempt to copy Olivier in any way. Jude Law is adequate but not outstanding. This film might be better suited to people who have not seen the original but in its own right this film is still not a classic of our time.

Kenneth Branagh is known for great Laurence Olivier remakes. His last remake was 1991's Hamlet. 16 years later Branagh is adapting one of Olivier's most famous films, Sleuth. He proves with his effective directing and camera techniques that he is still the greatest director for a remake. The film only has two actors, the legendary Michael Caine as he reverses his role this time around. In this film, the supposed Italian actor Milo Tindle is played by Jude Law. The film starts off with the camera cutting through security cameras throughout Wyke's (Caine) countryside estate. When Tindle arrives you find out that he is the lover to Wyke's wife. He simply asks for him to agree to a divorce, but Wyke has much more planned than that. The film then spends the rest of its time playing out elaborate mind games of deceit and trickery that will keep you guessing until the last second.

Usually, I think it'd be hard to watch just two actors for almost 90min. To pull it off, you'd have to have two incredibly strong actors to pull it off, and they got the perfect people for it. Michael Caine brings Olivier's role a fresher sense of darkness and questionable attributes. While Jude Law easily proves that he is one of his generations top actors. For playing Caine's former performance, Law is sufficient enough to keep the film going. During the second act of the film, Law will surprise you with a stunning performance.

Branagh's direction is somewhat courageous. He uses new camera techniques that haven't been seen before. Sleuth in some way is a dream for a cameraman. Branagh pulls off such interesting angles that it gives you different perspectives of what's going on in each scene. Whether your only line of sight is protruding through a set mini-blinds, it almost makes you feel like a peeping tom listening in on the mens conversation.

The script written by Harold Pinter is filled with eloquent dialog that will entrance you. The character's flip flop from good to bad constantly, so the dialog keeps you updated on who is winning the game. It also gives you a sense that there is a third character in the film. The house. It's incredibly high tech and is the reason for the same of the character's choices. Pinter also uses some of the designs in the house to help move the story along.

However though, towards the end of the second act it seems that the two characters start to get too caught up in their own games and the film does get a bit contrived. It lost my interest a little at the end as well. The film ends abruptly but leaves you hanging. After talking about everything, my conclusion is that Sleuth is definitely one of the greatest remakes of all time.

I give it an 8 out of 10

Calling this film a 'remake' is not only misleading, but also incorrect. Harold Pinter had never seen Anthony Shaffer's play performed or seen the classic 1972 film version directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, starring Caine and Laurence Olivier and penned by Shaffer himself. The 1972 version of "Sleuth" is an epic, 138 minute long battle of wits and egos, and is generally pretty much flawless.

2007's 86 minute long "Sleuth" is about as different as could be. Pinter wrote this script from scratch, using Shaffer's original stage script as the basis for it, and this is obvious right from the beginning. Anthony Shaffer was an immensely talented thriller writer ("Sleuth" was one of three truly great screenplays he wrote, the other two obvious standouts being "The Wicker Man" and Hitchcock's "Frenzy"), but other than using interesting subtexts, he was not exactly an intellectual writer. Pinter, on the other hand, is precisely that- an intellectual. Pinter does not write thrillers with subtext, he writes material driven almost entirely by thematic content which loosely fall in certain genres. What Pinter has done here is taken Shaffer's clever battle of wits and turned it upside down, making the dark subtext of battling male egos and perhaps even fetishism the main driving force of the film. This is a darker, more intellectual "Sleuth", one far colder than Shaffer's vision. It is distinctly Pinter's work.

The film is most interesting visually in the first half, where we are introduced to this cold, hi-tech version of the old country house we remember from the first film. The art decoration and set design in this film are simply fabulous and suit Pinter's vision perfectly. We see several shots through Wyke's surveillance equipment, establishing his cold, distant view of the world, alone in his large, empty residence. After the opening act, the film occasionally seems awkwardly-shot and I do have to question the use of the 2.35:1 screen format. It worked in the original film but this version seems to be going for a more depressing, claustrophobic feel and the width works against it, particularly as closeups become more common towards the end of the film.

I have no major qualms with Pinter's variation on Shaffer's play, but it is by no means superior. This concise and to the point version is much darker and more mean-spirited than the original play was. It starts at ugly and just gets uglier from there. Some may consider this a comedy, but there is little humor here, and the script is not too concerned with coming off as witty and dives straight into the battle of egos part, substituting ugly, straightforward insults for the witty degradation Shaffer's version had. Michael Caine and Jude Law are both excellent here, but neither are as inspired as Olivier and Caine were in the 1972 version.

I mentioned earlier that this was a darker, more intellectual "Sleuth". That is certainly true, but that does not mean that it is a better "Sleuth". This film is much more flawed than the previous film version was, and though it is a very good, interesting, and different take on Shaffer's play, it doesn't measure up to the the 1972 film. On its own, as a standalone film, it is excellent, though not among 2007's elite.

8/10

"If thou canst cuckold him, thou dost thyself a pleasure, me a sport." Iago in Shakespeare's Othello

Anthony Shaffer's brother, Peter, was famously about "What's that all about?" if you remember the mysteries of Equus. Playwright Anthony's Sleuth also requires a competent literary "sleuth" to figure out the multiple levels of meaning in a film that could be just about revenge if you looked no further. This brilliant adaptation by Pulitzer-winner and minimalist Harold Pinter contains his usual spare dialogue and non sequitur logic to provoke wonderment and amusement in a discerning audience that knows there's more than meets the eye and ear.

Wealthy novelist Andrew Wyke (Michael Caine) is visited in his impressive estate by his wife's lover, Milo Tindle (Jude Law). From the first interchange about the superiority of Wyke's car, which is placed nose to nose with Tindle's in an obviously figurative bird's-eye shot, the debate takes on a tennis metaphor, where each combatant takes a set and the resolution becomes a tangled endgame.

While it is easy to guess Shaffer has planned the author initially to be the manipulative superior as he guides his guest through one of the year's best set designs with its modern sharp edges and dazzling electronics, the play/film evolves with each character (this is a two hander where not even the tennis-ball wife physically intrudes) gets a chance to prove his worth for the absent but always present wife. Director Kenneth Branagh's close-ups are merciless upon Caine's age lines emphasizing his wisdom and Law's beauty featuring his youthful volatility and vulnerability. But the prevalent high angle motif puts all the mayhem in perspective: The cuckold will not be denied, no matter how daring, resourceful, and remorseless the intruder is; the men's sexuality will be challenged no matter how masculine the actors are. Ambiguity rules as it should in all effective literature and in life itself.

While the screenplay is literate beyond anything out there all year, the film belongs to the actors, Law soaring beyond his Ripley charm and Caine even better than when he played Law's Tindle in a previous screen version 35 years ago. The story about infidelity is universally appealing, as if it had never been told before and justice had never been rendered so well.

Just under 90 minutes that's all it takes to retell this Anthony Shaffer comedy of deception and disguise. The characters are not quite the same, this ones allow the darker side of their nature take the upper-hand. The new house is a cold technological monstrosity instead of the country manor of Laurence Olivier. In Harold Pinter's hand and brain everything is colder, darker and Shaffer's original comedy risks to become Ira Levin's "Deathtrap" at times. Michael Caine and Jude Law are inches away from a kiss here and that's a bizarre turn of events. True, Jude Law has a sexual presence that he carries as if he didn't know was there. Everything he says has a sexual connotation whether consciously or unconsciously. His Milo Tindle looks decidedly post coital. A bit undone, unwashed. Kenneth Brannagh conducts his duet with gusto but limited not just by the natural setting of the play but by the memory of the Manckiewicz original. Caine and Law make a fun, dirty pair and it's the power of their performances that makes this very short version appear even shorter. I could have stay a few more minutes with this two. That, I suppose, it's a form of giving it a thumbs up.