Sleepers

I hate giving films about weighty subjects a poor rating. It feels wrong, since in most cases the filmmakers have made an effort to mirror the serious tone of their films in the cinematography, often leading to some stunning effects. Not so here. I love Barry Levinson's ode-to-Baltimore trilogy (Diner, Avalon, Liberty Heights -- well, not so much the last one). They're clever, meaningful, and without a lot of gloss. Still, his visuals have never fully connected with the story. I mean, what's the deal in this film with the repetitious subway train shots and the strange scenes in which characters soft-talk off-screen? The tunnel effects didn't work for me either. (Although, the chase scene in the beginning is pretty good.) The film is shot by the amazing Michael Ballhaus, so it's got to be Levinson's choice. Now, back to the premise. The film is about child abuse, namely abuse by guards at a boy's school (which is more like a prison). That's hefty stuff, and I certainly felt beyond-sad at times, but I expected something a bit more raw overall. This may be a factor of being a film addict -- the more well-done emotionally charged films I see, the more I need to see just those. In terms of the actors, Brad Pitt was awful (what, does he have marbles in his mouth?) and Jason Patric is, as usual, a lump on screen. The kids were uniformly good and Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman stole all their scenes, of course. And while the writing was okay, I'll bet the book is better.

year: 1996
length: 147 min.
rating: 2.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117665/combined