Director Kenneth Branagh has mercifully pared the action down to 88 minutes (the first movie dragged on for 138), but the final act... still seems to go on forever.
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12/14/07
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Sleuth (2007)
34
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Reviews Counted:29
Fresh:10
Rotten:19
Average Rating:5.2/10
Consensus: Sleuth is so obvious and coarse, rather than suspenseful and action-packed, that it does nothing to improve on the original version
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Reviews for Sleuth
Top CriticDirector Kenneth Branagh clearly is having fun navigating Tim Harvey's slick set design, but eventually the characters' deadly competitiveness becomes tedious.
11/16/07
Top CriticThis film wants only to entertain, and other talents have gathered with Pinter to help.
11/07/07
Top CriticIt sounds so promising. It plays so disappointing.
11/02/07
Top CriticWe're left with two suitably hammy performances by Caine and Law, who do not forget they are actors playing actors, and a production design that must have kept the lighting people doing some ingenious plotting of their own.
11/02/07
Top CriticJust terrible.
11/02/07
Top CriticThis would have been a memorable night at the theater. Too bad they filmed it.
11/01/07
Top CriticClosed-circuit cameras and electronic gadgets are so much in abundance, bathed in the coldest of blue lights, it's as if Branagh chose to film his Sleuth in a Best Buy warehouse.
10/26/07
Top CriticA grand exercise in watching two marvelous actors rip into some crackling dialogue. It's the thespian equivalent of jousting, and it's fascinating to watch.
10/25/07
Top CriticLittle more than a sleek, stylish stunt.
10/25/07
Top CriticShaffer, who adapted the 1972 version himself, surely would be less than thrilled by the post-modern, minimalist interpretation given to his best-known work, and understandably so.
10/19/07
Top CriticSleuth gradually becomes soulless and no fun, and what's the point of that?
10/19/07
Top CriticIn Sleuth what he [Kenneth Branagh] celebrates is perplexing, ominous, insinuating material in the hands of two skilled actors.
10/19/07
Top CriticBranagh, whose screen career with Shakespeare began on a high note with Henry V and has gone steadily downhill since, does a nice job keeping a stagebound piece relatively cinematic without resorting to the usual opening-up techniques.
10/18/07
Top CriticIf you consider what the exalted quartet of Branagh, Pinter, Caine and Law might have done with the project, and what they did to it, Sleuth has to be the worst prestige movie of the year.
10/16/07
Top CriticTedious, pretentious, and ludicrous.
10/15/07
Top CriticKenneth Branagh is not a director with a light touch, or an aversion to self-importance, and the movie's visuals are too painfully obvious.
10/12/07
Top CriticJust when things should be getting exciting and complex, they become repetitive and predictable. Subtext becomes hint becomes statement becomes declaration. For once, Pinter is a little too easy to understand.
10/12/07
Top CriticSo what's it all about? Got me.
10/12/07
Top CriticLanguage this lethal has all but disappeared from the movies, and it's an unmitigated pleasure to observe Caine and Law attack it with such ferocity. Sleuth is nasty fun.
10/12/07
Top CriticLatest News for Sleuth
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November 23, 2007:
Kenneth Branagh on Sleuth: The RT Interview
The Shakespearian thesp tells us about re-adapting the classic play, originally made into a 1972 film with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. More...
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