Sleepers (DVD)

An all star cast hits the message home in this stunning coming of age drama about four friends sticking together through thick and thin. Sleepers (1996) is directed by Barry Levinson in haunting style, providing us with a brilliant thriller. The Plot Four friends growing up in Hell's Kitchen learn they must stick together as friends while their families struggle to feed them. Following a prank gone wrong, they are sent to a youth detention centre, where they are subject to the rule-breaking ways of the warden and his guards. Brutalised and tormented, they finally serve their time and, as grown adults ten years later, they see a chance for ...  Read the complete review

Hells Kitchen, New York has always been a difficult place to live let alone grow up in, with drug dealers, murderers and rapists at every corner, but that's just the surroundings that four young boys grow up in, in 1967. The mischievous boys play a prank on a hot dog vender however what at first was a juvenile prank turned into something much more serious when the prank goes horribly wrong. The four boys end up in a juvenile prison for at least a year of their lives. At 14 years old the boys are introduced to daily beatings and sexual assaults. Needless to say the scars run deep and 13 years on they still haven't forgotten. When two of the boys grown up come ...  Read the complete review

Growing up in Hell's Kitchen in the mid sixties is great fun for Tommy, John, Michael and Shakes. They play hard, but they are generally good kids, much liked in the neighbourhood. But a prank one day changes their lives for ever - they steal a hot dog vendor's stand and let it go at the top of some stairs, seriously injuring someone who got in its way. Sent to a detention camp for a few months, they are bullied and brutalized at the hands of the wardens. None of the boys recover, but it affects Tommy and John most of all, who end up in and out of prison. Then one day, Tommy and John come across one of the wardens and shoot him dead. Mike and Shakes, both lawyers, try to ...  Read the complete review

~~~Sleepers~~~ In the long hot summer of 1967, four childhood friends growing up in Hells Kitchen play a seemingly harmless prank on a hot dog vendor, however it all goes disastrously wrong when they nearly kill a man who is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sentenced by the courts they boys are sent to the Wilkinson Home for boys for up to 1 year's punishment. Beaten, brutalised and sexually assaulted by the guards that are responsible for them, the boys leave detention centre a shadow of their former selves and holding a secret tryst they swear to forget once on the outside. Scarred by their experiences the boys each take their own path ...  Read the complete review

Sleepers (1996) a film based on a book by Lorenzo Carcaetrra (which may or may not be a true story) is directed by Barry Levinson (Rain Man, Good Morning Vietnam, Bugsy). Is stars an amazing line up of Actors - De Niro, Pitt, Bacon, Hoffman and Patric amongst others. This is an amazing film. It shows how the mis-adaventures of a gang of New York children can have lasting repercussions and transform lives. The children grow up in Hells Kitchen, New York (nothing to do with Ramsey!!). Under the watchful eye of Father Bobby (De Niro) they help New York gangster King Benny move money about the city. They live their lives playfully as children do, ...  Read the complete review