Sleepless

Despite boasting a great cast and a gripping (if not entirely original) premise, Sleepless is unfortunately less than the sum of its parts, and after a promising start it quickly becomes increasing ridiculous as it goes on.

Premise:  After two corrupt Las Vegas cops (Jamie Foxx and T.I.) rip off a cocaine shipment, they soon find themselves caught between a casino-owning wannabe-gangster (Dermot Mulroney), a violent crime boss (Scoot McNairy), and a pair of dogged Internal Affairs investigators (Michelle Monaghan and David Harbour).

Review:

There's no denying that the cast list in this film is very impressive – in particular, Jamie Foxx and Michelle Monaghan are rarely less than great in most of the projects they do.  Here, Foxx plays Vincent Downs, a corrupt Las Vegas detective who is first introduced to the audience murdering a couple of thugs with his partner, Sean Cass (played by the ever-reliable supporting actor T.I.), in order to steal their drugs shipment.  It’s an impressive opening, and Foxx brings the same sense of controlled menace that he turned up to eleven in the recent Baby Driver.

Monaghan is equally impressive, introduced as Internal Affairs detective Jennifer Bryant, who’s just returned to work following a violent assault which has seen her judgment called into question by her superiors.  Facing prejudice and sexism on all sides, she has to be twice as good as her colleagues just to get by.  Soon, Downs and Cass are investigating the murders they themselves committed, while Bryant and her partner Doug Dennison (character-actor-supreme David Harbour) are trailing Downs, convinced that he’s hiding something.  So far, so good.

“…an intriguing five-way conflict…”

It’s not giving anything away (it’s in the trailer and it’s the basic premise of the film) to say that things escalate when the owner of the drugs, casino boss Stanley Rubino (Dermot Mulroney) kidnaps Downs’ estranged son and threatens to kill him unless the drugs are returned.  Initially this creates an interesting sense of jeopardy as Downs must find a way to keep his son safe from Rubino, while also keeping Cass on side, as well as evading the watchful eye of Bryant and Dennison.  The wildcard in the situation is Rob Novak (Scoot McNairy), the psychopathic crime boss who Rubino was about to sell the drugs to.  Soon we have an intriguing five-way conflict on our hands, as all of the parties gradually converge on Rubino’s casino.

But it’s at that point that the film sadly loses its sense of tension and realism.  In the earlier scenes, this was a gripping and grounded crime drama – but as the film progresses it relies on more and more outlandish plot-twists and action set-pieces to keep the characters contained in the casino.  One plot-twist in particular at the halfway point serves to undermine the complexity of one of the main characters, and feels like the writers lost their nerve and cheated the audience.

“…the film never lives up to its potential…”

Nevertheless, as long as you set your expectations suitably low, this isn’t a complete disaster.  Foxx and Monaghan do all they can with the material, and Mulroney adds layers to what could have been a rather two-dimensional character.  Even McNairy’s crime boss has some interesting facets, such as the fact that (as bad as he is) he’s only pursuing the missing drugs because if he doesn’t, his father the uber-crime-boss will need to get involved in clearing up his son’s mess.  This is an interesting recurring theme throughout the film, as nearly all of the characters are only doing what they’re doing because someone else is threatening them with a worst fate if they don’t.

But ultimately, the film never lives up to its potential, and it falls apart in the final act with predictable twists, clichéd and unrealistic scenarios, and an ending that relies too heavily on characters making dumb mistakes.  It’s a shame that a film that started off feeling a bit like a feature-film version of The Shield ends up like just another straight-to-DVD action thriller.