I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (2004)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Am I Missing Something?

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

The movie was worth watching. Good acting across the board. The plot Was excellent. The ending was different.Clive Owens performs a metamorphosis in appearances in this movie. Clive Owens gives an outstanding performance, but is ruined by the script.Great supporting actors.I enjoyed the movie, but was a disappointment. One discouraging aspect of the movie was that it painted London as a dreary crime corrupted town.Nice display of fancy European cars.Malcolm McDowel plays a really grimy criminal.

I adore Clive Owen, and if his name is on a movie, I'll watch it. Maybe not after this, though.I'll Sleep When I'm Dead is from 2003. Directed by Mike Hodges, the cast includes Owen, Malcolm McDowell, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Sylvia Syms, Jamie Foreman, and Charlotte Rampling. Great cast assembled for a slow, sickening movie.Clive Owen plays Will, an ex-gangster now living hand to mouth in a van (but we aren't told why), when he learns that his brother Davey has committed suicide in London. He comes home to find out why. He learns that Davey was raped and killed himself as a result. He is determined to extract revenge.The question is whether or not Will returns to his old life, which is answered at the end of the film. The end of the movie is ambiguous, but if you read the explanations here on the message board, you'll see logical explanations. I just didn't want to watch it five more times.Besides being uninvolved, the reason for the attack on Davey made no sense to me. Such a violent, debasing act, and for that reason? The script could have made that much stronger by first of all, showing us more of McDowell's character, and giving him a compelling reason to take Davey down, such as that Davey was encroaching on his territory or something. Most of the characters were too sketchy to give us any real insight into them.As far as I'm concerned, the best performances were by Jamie Foreman as one of Davey's friends, and Sylvia Syms as his landlady.Clive Owen and Charlotte Rampling underplayed to the point of being comatose. Their scenes together were better than Ambien. I blame the director for this; Owen is a very good actor.If someone got something out of this film, I'm happy for them. For me it was an unpleasant way to spend an evening.

Huge talent on display here. Trenchant dialogue. Nicely filmed. A little slowly paced, but the story unfolds nicely. Peek inside the British dark side? For sure.So what's wrong with this excellently acted British revenge drama? It arrives at an ambiguous ending. On some level, that is interesting. But only if we understand who is doing what at the end. We do not know.Am I an idiot, or is it important what the identity is of the man driving golf balls on the beach? Ambiguity is the hardest thing non-art-movie audiences have with art movies. Twisted they can take. Irony they can take. Bitter they can take. Political they can take. But unclear outcomes are, and remain, the one issue that audiences, including dumbass Americans like me, have trouble with. What just happened? Nice seeing Charlotte Rampling. Still sexy after all these years.

This film is a bit like a cheap cowboy book. You know the type I mean. The protagonist discovers his sister has been raped and it takes the whole book for him to find the perpetrator and exercise brutal justice. All very raw and predictable . This has a slight twist in that the cowboy is modern day ex villain, and he has a brother rather than a sister who is raped by a man. The raped brother does a Roman bath thing and there are some grizzly explanations for this.The film then pretends to be moody and at the same time slowly tries to develop character. It fails to do this and all the characters are just as superficial at the end as when they started out. In addition, the whole film lacks pace. The only thing that kept my interest was that I kept asking 'why' throughout and eventually the answers were not very satisfactory. The plot was as I predicted.Having said that the DVD cost me a mere £1 brand new - so I can't complain too much.