Light Sleeper (1992)

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

John LeTour (Willem Dafoe) is a high class drug dealer in Manhattan. His boss Ann (Susan Sarandon) is moving into legitimate cosmetics business. He can't sleep and often writes in his notebooks. He runs into former love Marianne Jost (Dana Delany). She has been clean for four years. He tells her that he's been clean for two and has stopped dealing. She calls him out right away but spends the night with him after a second meeting. She falls apart after her mother dies on that night in the hospital while she's away with him. Later, he finds her drugged out with his disturbing client Tis (Victor Garber).Paul Schrader goes down another dark road to find LeTour. Dafoe is a powerful actor although I would have liked him to fall apart more. The man is dealing with insomnia and guilt. It would be advantageous to add delusions and outbursts. It's a good film but it could go more disturbing.

A Paul Schrader film set in the dark and gritty streets of Manhattan should always be a good sign, but rather than feeling like a welcome return to Taxi Driver territory, Light Sleeper feels like an attempted knock-off by an inferior writer and director. On the surface, it has everything it takes to be an instant classic - quality actors, gorgeous cinematography, a tormented and torn protagonist. But it doesn't add up to a coherent and captivating film; the various subplots go nowhere and don't lead to a satisfying conclusion, Dafoe's narration is filled to the brim with clichés of the genre, which doesn't help his character feel any more interesting than it does. The music is awful and feels like it was dragged out of the 80's, and destroys any pretense of a neo-noir atmosphere the film may have. And while Dafoe gives a solid performance, and Susan Sarandon is absolutely terrific playing decisively against type, Dana Delany and Jane Adams didn't work for me and took a lot of credibility away from the film.Light Sleeper looks and feels like it should a neo-noir with old-fashioned storytelling and character study, which is why I wanted to like it much more than I did; maybe the high expectations are why I ended up disliking it more than it deserves. It's not a terrible movie - just one that should have been great, and is instead utterly forgettable and disposable. I remain a loyal fan of Paul Schrader, Willem Dafoe and Susan Sarandon, but to me this isn't a high point for any of them.

Here's Schrader again, spinning his wheels in the same muck:Lowlifes In Torment, for the umpteenth time. This contraption has the same morbid pathology as 'Taxi Driver", an ugly POINTLESS movie about stupid ugly losers doing the things that identify them as a species, like grubs under a rotten log.By endowing his characters with fully differentiated personalities, motivations, ambitions even, God help us, Schrader betrays himself yet again as the perpetual adolescent he's always been.With the grotesque Willem Dafoe and Susan Sarandon, who reminds me of a drag queen on dope, this film should appeal to the depressingly sizable audience who love bad movies about lowlifes-in-torment by kings of arrested development---like Schrader, Scorcese, DePalma and their acolytes.NEWS FLASH: Narcotics dealers, wise guys, hit men and their like have the "inner lives" of venomous predatory reptiles. PERIOD. To maintain otherwise is to indulge in a despicable sentimentality. Which Schrader has made a career of. The inside of his head must be a dark and fearful place.

***1/2 Written and directed by Paul Schrader, the screenwriter of 'Taxi Driver', there are similar themes in 'Light sleeper' that echo its predecessor in its urban isolation of the protagonist and the city as a sewer environment. Willem Dafoe is wonderful as a coke dealer on the verge of chartering new territory; he's trying to make sense of his past, as exemplified by his chance encounters with a former flame (Dana Delany) in which he so badly wants to cling, and plans for his future as his boss is moving on from the business. This is a character driven story, and the characters are well-drawn. Willem Dafoe's John Le Tour is a more mature Travis Bickle, past-his-prime, darkly contemplative and endlessly writing in journals trying to find meaning or direction. After beating his cocaine addiction 2 years before and adjusting, can he readjust again, finding semblance? However, as others have mentioned, the film should've ended with him harmoniously? between two Chinese paintings, leaning back on the bed. After that, studio meddling had to have ensued, as the sugary conclusion does not fit. Separate Note: Would some company already release 'Blue Collar' by Paul Schrader and with Richard Pryor already?