Maddeningly shapeless.
I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (2004)
Tomatometer
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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
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.
This one's more about mood than anything else. Specifically, it's that gritty, sleek, film noir feeling that Hodges seems drawn to, and which this film delivers in spades.
Matching the movie's restrained style, Owen is extraordinarily still, and all the more riveting because of it.
Even Clive Owen can't bring the level of this movie up from an average revenge flick.
While Croupier was taut and focused, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, though atmospheric, is vague and meandering.
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.
Oddly old-fashioned and dull...emphasizes mood over content, yet doesn't even manage to make the atmosphere compelling.
Owen has some very un-Bond-like accessories here -- a hillbilly beard, a sleeping bag, a chainsaw -- but his commanding performance keeps I'll Sleep solid.
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.
Unless you fancy movies constructed of pure style, this one could put you to sleep.
Unfortunately, the characters and their motivations are so poorly defined that the story seems vague and incomplete.
A scarred-up, bare-knuckled fighter in Palookaville, pretty in its pug-ugly grace, and dangerous, too.
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.
Dead could have used a direct blast of energy at some point instead of the trickle it finally gets. This film's already asleep.
Stylish as it may be, it's as though someone has already remade Get Carter badly and Hodges is set on showing how it should have been done.
Hodges (Get Carter, Croupier) delivers another splendidly stylish thriller that's full of dark atmosphere and discordant notes.
The pleasures that even a brutal, intelligent thriller should deliver are in short supply.
Hodges cuts the film like a diamond, but it's just an exercise in cut glass, an impressive surface that only looks tough.
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 15% 15% | The Ugly Truth |
| 98% 98% | Up |
| 36% 36% | G.I. Joe: The Rise of … |
| 52% 52% | The Taking of Pelham 1… |
| 45% 45% | Ice Age: Dawn of the D… |
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 36% 36% | Angels & Demons |
| 68% 68% | Funny People |
| 25% 25% | Four Christmases |
| 45% 45% | Shorts |
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