Sleuth Reviews
November 18, 2007
Sleuth is no longer a fun whodunnit; it's been transformed into a baffling whatthehellweretheythinking?
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
November 17, 2007
A film that's right up there with Crash, The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), and the Kennedy White House for sheer wasted potential and misguided ambition.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
November 17, 2007
The movie never achieves anything like a life of its own.
Original Score: C-
November 16, 2007
A tedious bit of shenanigans and sleight of hand lifelessly realized by director Kenneth Branagh.
Original Score: 2/4
November 16, 2007
Director Kenneth Branagh clearly is having fun navigating Tim Harvey's slick set design, but eventually the characters' deadly competitiveness becomes tedious.
Original Score: 2.5/4
November 16, 2007
An utter redundancy...
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
November 15, 2007
While the cagey old pro does manage to hold our interest throughout, Law badly flounders in the sort of vehicle that seems tailor-made for him.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
November 9, 2007
It doesnt work, and the reasons why are no mystery, no mystery at all.
Original Score: 2/5
November 9, 2007
The back-and-forth goes on and on, increasingly impenetrable. Talk. Poke. Provoke. Repeat.
Original Score: 2/4
November 9, 2007
Constantly upstaging the rest of the cast, and reminding us over and over that we are watching a stogy, old fashioned stage play, Branagh's loopy lens is indeed the best part of Sleuth. Everything else is just plain pointless.
Original Score: 2.5/5
November 7, 2007
Alas, it just doesn't work. It could have, but it doesn't.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
November 6, 2007
A film that gives a twist to the old chestnut, but one that shatters what was best about it in the first place.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
November 2, 2007
This was never going to be a masterpiece, but it didn't have to be nearly so frustrating.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/10
November 2, 2007
While [writer] Pinter contributes some venom-spitting new dialogue, he also deviates wildly from the original story in the third act -- which would be fine, if the deviations weren't less compelling and more abrupt than Shaffer's original ideas.
Original Score: C
November 2, 2007
It sounds so promising. It plays so disappointing.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
November 2, 2007
We'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.
Original Score: 2/4
November 2, 2007
Just terrible.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
October 26, 2007
Branagh's Sleuth delivers a preening surface that's glossy and coldly attractive but we don't care a whit about the characters or what happens to them.
Original Score: 4/10
October 26, 2007
Expertly acted by the two leads and wildly entertaining for a about half the picture this new version goes wildly off the rails, the final thirty minutes or so implausibly executed it's just about enough to make a viewer's head spin.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
October 26, 2007
Closed-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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4