Warner Bros
Sleepers is a great studio drama for adults: part memoir, part drama, part thriller.
Director Barry Levinson adapted Lorenzo Carcaterra’s autobiography and assembled an impeccable cast. The script, also by Levinson, was unusual and not obviously marketable: with elements of courtroom drama, crime story, and coming-of-age tragedy without treating any single genre as dominant.The screenplay trusts structure and character more than shock value. It has enormous respect for the reality that the film is based on and that lends the story a lot more gravitas than you would expect from a thriller.
In Hell’s Kitchen during the 1960s, four friends—Shakes (Jason Patric), Michael (Brad Pitt), Tommy (Billy Crudup), and John (Ron Eldard)—grow up under the guidance of local priest Father Bobby (Robert De Niro).
After a prank goes wrong and leaves a man dead, the boys are sent to a juvenile detention center where guard Sean Nokes (Kevin Bacon) and other staff members abuse them. Years later, Tommy and John encounter Nokes in a restaurant and kill him. Assistant district attorney Michael seeks acquittal for his friends while journalist Shakes narrates the story and uncovers the history of the abuse. Prosecutor King Benny (Dustin Hoffman), mob figure King Benny’s associate Carol (Minnie Driver), and crime boss Little Caesar (Vittorio Gassman) become part of a trial that turns into a reckoning with the past.
The strongest element in the film is the script.
Levinson shapes the narrative with patience and clear movement between time periods. There’s trust in the audience to keep up with the ensemble cast between time periods. Scenes echo each other in ways that deepen the emotional effect without calling attention to construction, and you’re expected to be actively listening. I actually think the film might have benefitted from omitting the central narration because it really underlines motivation, and it feels like the actors were going for a certain ambiguity in the adult performances that could have elevated the material even further. This is, however, a minor complaint.
That’s a perfect segway to the film’s greatest strength: Sleepers is an actor’s picture.
Jason Patric gives the film its moral center as the older Shakes. I’m not a fan of his narration for thematic reasons, but the quality of his delivery is first rate. Brad Pitt plays Michael with a true cool intellectual quality, and that’s not really what you associate from Pitt as an actor but he nails it here.Kevin Bacon gives one of the film’s best performances because he refuses to soften Nokes; the character remains just a scoundrel from beginning to end, which makes the later confrontation land with real power.
De Niro works in a quieter register than many of his crime roles from the era while Dustin Hoffman, by contrast, brings tremendous energy into the trial scenes. The greatest joy of Sleepers is watching De Niro and Hoffman play off of a new generation of younger actors who have to rise to their level and hold the screen with them.
Levinson directs with discipline. He keeps the visual style grounded in shadows and claustrophobia that reflect the closed world of the characters. The abuse scenes are perfectly handled: they get across the horror the characters are haunted by, but they have enough restraint that they don’t overwhelm the film. The major theme of the entire film is that childhood damage shapes adult identity, and Levinson never loses sight of his lede.
What makes Sleepers effective after many years is its balance. It works as a crime film, a legal drama, and a story about friendship. The impersonal cruelty of institutions juxtaposed against the loyalty of friends over the years. This is a minor classic of the 1990s.
Extras include two brief featurettes.
Recommended.
