The biggest suspense in "I'll Sleep When I?m Done" is wondering when Clive Owen is going cut his hair.
I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (2004)
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Reviews Counted:85
Fresh:36
Rotten:49
Average Rating:5.5/10
Rated: R [See Full Rating] for language, a rape scene, violent images and brief drug use
Runtime: 1 hr 43 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Jun 16, 2004 Limited
Box Office: $212,359
Synopsis: Cars full of fast-talking British hoods and rain-soaked city streets in the dead of night--that's the stuff of which Mike Hodges's (CROUPIER) impossibly cool neo-noir gangster thriller is made.... Cars full of fast-talking British hoods and rain-soaked city streets in the dead of night--that's the stuff of which Mike Hodges's (CROUPIER) impossibly cool neo-noir gangster thriller is made. Clive Owen plays Graham, a former top mobster who has since retired to a nomadic life in the woods. His little brother Davey (John Rhys-Davies) meanwhile swaggers through posh parties back in the city, dealing drugs and engaging in freewheeling sex and petty thefts until he's violently sodomized by a white-haired car dealer (Malcolm McDowell). His subsequent suicide brings Graham back into the seedy underworld he left behind on a mission of revenge. Before he can find his brother's rapist though, he has to tangle with the new head bad boy in town (Frank Stott), who thinks Graham's come to take his old spot back. Much like Simon Fisher Turner's dissonant, avante-jazz score, the film dodges a straight-ahead story and instead breaks out in moody variations in the key of noir. Fatalistic dialogue, extreme masculine anxiety, a cast teeming with eccentrics, desolate streets, gray beaches, darkened elevators, and foreboding alleyways all blend into an atonal crime-jazz poem. The inestimable Charlotte Rampling plays Graham's concerned, and much older, ex-girlfriend. Fans of the more classic gangster entries may rest assured Graham eventually does rain violence down upon the deserving. [More]
Starring: Clive Owen, Jonathan Rhys-Myers, Malcolm McDowell, Charlotte Rampling
Starring: Clive Owen, Jonathan Rhys-Myers, Malcolm McDowell, Charlotte Rampling, Frank Stott
Director: Mike Hodges
Director: Mike Hodges
Screenwriter: Trevor Preston
Producer: Michael Corrente, Michael Kaplan
Composer: Simon Fisher Turner
Studio: Paramount Classics
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Reviews for I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
Stylish filmmaking and philosophical musings can only disguise a lack of movement for so long. The trouble with I'll Sleep When I'm Dead is that it's already dead...
...continually thwarts genre expectations with its somber, thoughtful treatment of the brutal subject matter.
...a kind of inside-out noir, a stately film about the sad progress of a diminished and sad but still frightful and dangerous monster.
This sad, dark movie moves across the screen like a sleepwalker, aloof and belonging neither to this world nor the next.
With little investment in their fates and little understanding of their real motives, it's a moribund movie that's caught napping far in advance of its final breath.
Feels undernourished in plot, characterization, and dialogue, and what should play with minimalist high tension is allowed to sag lower and lower until it simply grounds out.
Unless you fancy movies constructed of pure style, this one could put you to sleep.
While "Get Carter" had the visceral nastiness of an electric guitar solo, "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" is more like a mournful jazz riff, atmospheric and unresolved.
There is a tangible pleasure in following enigmatic characters through the shadows of their lives.
Precisely the kind of film that should be seen by insomniacs at some ungodly hour of the night. (The title itself supports this theory.)
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.
Unfortunately, the characters and their motivations are so poorly defined that the story seems vague and incomplete.
Perhaps a little too slow and not much of a payoff, but this latest from the infrequent Mike Hodges will do until he's ready for another.
The pleasures that even a brutal, intelligent thriller should deliver are in short supply.
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 44% 44% | Night at the Museum: B… |
| 32% 32% | Terminator Salvation |
| 36% 36% | Angels & Demons |
| 95% 95% | Star Trek |
| 25% 25% | Four Christmases |
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 88% 88% | Inglourious Basterds |
| 78% 78% | The Hangover |
| 49% 49% | Taking Woodstock |
| 26% 26% | The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard |
| 47% 47% | The Girl From Monaco |
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