I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (2003)
Average Rating: 5.5/10
Reviews Counted: 86
Fresh: 37 | Rotten: 49
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 5.9/10
Critic Reviews: 29
Fresh: 15 | Rotten: 14
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 2.9/5
User Ratings: 7,924
My Rating
Movie Info
For I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, director Mike Hodges re-teams with Trevor Preston, the respected British television writer with whom he made a series of documentaries for ITV back in the 1960s. The film also brings the director together again with actor Clive Owen, the star of his previous film, Croupier, which signaled Hodges' resurgence. Owen plays Will Graham, a former London gangster who moved out to the country after suffering a breakdown of some sort. Will works clearing forests, and lives
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Cast
-
Clive Owen
Will Graham -
Charlotte Rampling
Helen -
Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Davey -
Malcolm McDowell
Boad -
Jamie Foreman
Mickser -
Ken Stott
Frank Turner -
Sylvia Syms
Mrs. Bartz -
Geoff Ball
Arnie Ryan -
Desmond Baylis
Cannibal (Jez) -
Kirris Riviere
Big John -
Brian Croucher
Al Shaw -
Ross Boatman
Malone -
Marc O'Shea
Paulin -
-
Noel Clarke
Cyril
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All Critics (91) | Top Critics (30) | Fresh (38) | Rotten (51) | DVD (15)
Languorous, elliptical and dull.
Top CriticMatching the movie's restrained style, Owen is extraordinarily still, and all the more riveting because of it.
A tight, well-made, evocative piece of filmmaking for true connoisseurs of gangster movies that is unnerving, yet completely sure of every step it takes.
This is Owen's picture. He broods, he seethes, he plots. Sometimes he even speaks, but it's not necessary. One glance from Will is enough to send chills down anyone's spine.
Unfortunately, the characters and their motivations are so poorly defined that the story seems vague and incomplete.
Those with the patience to adapt to its pace will find rewards.
While the performances are excellent and the Get Carter-in-reverse plot is intriguing, this is a film where atmospherics triumph over the script.
I'll Sleep When I'm Dead deftly traces the sad, steady pulse just under the skin of things . . . the lingering images etching out their own fitting epitaph.
...ended up sending us to slumberland a good deal sooner than the title implied.
Atmospheric post-noir film of the London underworld that never amounts to much of anything.
The bleak I'll Sleep When I'm Dead may be the year's nastiest noir, but its low profile won't improve via this perfunctory DVD.
Next time Mike Hodges wants to make a movie, I would suggest he shoot it in total darkness and drop the dialogue.
[S]trip[s] the mobster film down to its bare essentials, and the result is stark and relentless...
Ace noir title, OK noir movie.
...a kind of inside-out noir, a stately film about the sad progress of a diminished and sad but still frightful and dangerous monster.
Hodges and Preston have a commendable attitude, but with the thin story and shallow characters, even the right idea doesn't seem as interesting as it should be.
Predictable to a fault.
... Hodges is the kind of director who can breathe new life into old material with an offhand, deceptively minimalist approach.
Too often sleepwalks to its inevitable finish.
In the end, it is the complex aura surrounding Owen's character...that stay with the viewer long after the threads of the story have unraveled in one's mind.
Audience Reviews for I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
Super Reviewer
DIRECTED BY: Mike Hodges
It doesn't really matter what this film was about. All I know is that it not only had Clive Owen in it but it also had Jonathan Rhys Meyers in it and it still couldn't keep me interested. It was by far the most boring thriller I have ever seen, maybe the only. This is what I would call a sleepy thriller. I did shut my eyes a couple times and didn't even miss a thing. Just very disappointed. I had wanted to see this and the trailer made it look like it would be a decent thriller. Lies.. LOL.. Also the actress Charlotte Rampling plays Owens past love interest. Is it just me or did she seem a bit old for the part? I had thought she was their mother.. My mistake I guess.. Anyways, most of the time I say see it for yourself since all our tastes are not the same, and I will do so with this one as well. Maybe it's from the long day that I have had that I felt that this movie was sleepy.. or I was just sleepy.. Maybe I should watch it again.. but I am certain I will come to the same conclusion... Boring and disappoiniting..
Super Reviewer
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December 10, 2010:
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