Sleeping Dogs 2024

Sleeping-Dogs-2024
Sleeping Dogs 2024

The resurgence of Russell Crowe appears to be imminent and this seems to be the optimal time in his career to make such a bold prediction. However, I have been waiting for that moment since the release of “The Nice Guys,” which was his film alongside Ryan Gosling. He has gone past the years where he has things to prove, and at this moment it seems every project he is involved in is automatically elevated due to his presence. Take for instance “The Pope’s Exorcist” where I thought Crowe’s performance made the film several notches better than it was. I mean, I hope they shoot five more. It just comes down to the right filmmaker having faith in his natural ability. This seems to be the reason that I was compelled to seek out Adam Cooper’s “Sleeping Dogs”, a film that bore the promise of being a Russel Crowe’s “Memento”. This was a film that focused on a unique narration of memories and perceptions, weaving them together ever so intricately, but through a very unreliable lens. But I’m getting ahead of myself because he does more to this sluggish picture than it warrants. The film worries me at present as it dawns on me that Oscar winners such as Crowe might go the other way, espousing the culture of cheap VOD thrillers. This has been the situation with most actors who used to be choosy about their projects. Crowe is better than Sleeping Dogs. Most actors are.

Informed by The Book of Mirrors by E.O. Chirovici, “Sleeping Dogs” starts with the hero who suffers from the most horrible form of dementia. Roy Freeman (Crowe), a retired cop, has post-it notes all over his house tape reminding him how to perform simple tasks like making toast or even his own name. Naturally, this is going to be one of those ‘disease of political convenience’ films, brilliant! the most effective disability management solution in my observation one that restrains the main character too much when the storyline requires it or magically disappears when the action is just about to get going. Oh, and Roy is also undergoing something dramatic, brain surgeries and the permanent use of pills for some reason. The plot makes it easy for a typical cop to re-open a case he has previously sealed with the assumption that he will be quite different now. One can tell that he is going to find the memories he lost for a very good reason.

The re-investigation is initiated by an upcoming execution of Isaac Samuel (Pacharo Mzembe), who is sentenced to death for the gruesome murder of Dr. Joseph Wieder (Marton Csokas), a respected researcher and professor, ten years earlier. No, Samuel is guilty. This is not a film. Of course, there are flashbacks that show him being in the vicinity of the murder of Dr. Wieder but not the actual eyewitness of the act. Roy is perplexed and decides to go back to the case. This brings him to his old partner, Jimmy Remis (Tommy Flanagan), who doesn’t seem to have left the memory of their last encounter alone and wants Roy to ever do the same. Get it, the last time Roy was at Jimmy’s you-sleep-breakfast dog skull. That’s what the movie is going to be called.

Of course, Roy says that yes, but due to the circumstances that have ruined his life, Roy is persistent in looking at the case once more. He starts investigating Richard Finn (Harry Greenwood) who recently died under suspicious circumstances and who wrote a true crime memoir about the Wieder murder. Finn’s partner, Laura Baines (Karen Gillan), who was doing research for a book and may have been more than that with Wieder, is clearly one of the keys to what happened that night. As Cooper’s film switches to a long flashback of how things transpired through the eyes and voice of Finn in the weeks before the crime happened, it’s accepted that this is a perspective that should be taken with a pinch of salt. Not every writing where Laura is referred to as “one of those rare unicorns who knew everything about everything” needs to be taken seriously, nor does the writing of Finn who may be artistically imagining his subject.

Considering the present case, the relations of a dead man with a woman and the subsequent inner workings of a detective suffering from memory blackouts can make it interesting before the screenplay, but I can’t imagine how it can be translated effectively on film.

The script for the movie by Cooper and Bill Collage is full of incoherent plotting and funny characters, and I feel the writers believe this is all okay because there is not a single sensible person present in this chaos. That is quite forgivable but also results in some sequences that come off as total nonsense, and too much that is like a sledgehammer being used on a nail. For instance, Roy places up a puzzle to keep himself busy and his mind alert, but also because he is literally piecing the puzzle of his memory together and the case. Then he proceeds to voiceover about doing the puzzle, just so you do not miss the point.

Sleeping Dogs” is that type of film, where a so-called brilliant man describes to the audience how he managed to uncover certain repressed traumas, as if some novel psychological aspect was never known before. Most characters in most of the scenes seem either lost or irritated. Well, except for Crowe, who seems to groan his way through another Don’t Give a Fudge film, and manages to find ways to make even the most depressing films like these worthwhile. My only wish is to be able to see “Sleeping Dogs” wake him up and make him realize the actor that he once was and still is.

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