Friendship Runs Deeper Than Blood - A True Story? (Sleepers (DVD))

Member Name: lisajo

Product:	Sleepers (DVD)
Date:	06/07/09 (33 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Its a great film

Disadvantages: Not easy to watch in places due to the brutality

This is one of the most watched films in my collection. Mainly because it is such a powerful movie, yet very bleak.

Set in New York's Hell's Kitchen, 4 teenage boys, played by Brad Renfro (RIP)(Michael Sullivan), Joe Perrino (Shakes), Jonathon Tucker (Tommy) and Geoffrey Widgor (John Reilly) are best friends and seem to be drawn together by their equally awful home lives dealing with regular beatings, poverty and a generally shitty childhood.

The beginning of the films deals with the summer when the 4 friends get up to all sorts, swimming and fishing and playing ball games in the street, but pay the ultimate price when a prank goes wrong and an old man ends up in hospital. They are sentenced to serve at least one year in the Wilkinson Home for Boys (a juvenile detention centre).

The middle part of the film follows their time at Wilkinsons enduring endless rapes and beatings at the hands of the guard Noakes (Kevin Bacon) and his colleagues.

The latter part of the film jumps forward to 1981 when the 4 friends are much older and have each taken different paths with their lives. Brad Pitt, Jason Patric, Billy Crudrup and Ron Elard are cast as the friends in 1981. All I can say without giving much away is that 'revenge is a dish best served cold'.

The films also stars Robert DeNiro; who plays a priest and is faced with making probably the biggest moral decision of his life and career, Minnie Driver and Dustin Hoffman.

The Soundtrack (John Williams) to this film is absolutely spot on for the theme. It includes Frankie Valli's Walk Like a Man and December 1963; Spencer Davis Groups' Gimme Some Lovin and The Beach Boys Catch a Wave and Good Vibrations.

It is an utterly compelling film and I strangely enjoy it. I say strangely as I do not know how it is possible to enjoy watching such bleakness and brutality. It is widely debated as to whether the story is actually true. Lorenzo Carcaterra claims it to be a true account but with dates and names changed, but of course with this all detention centres in NY deny that this story is at all true. Personally, I believe it!

Director: Barry Levinson
Writer of Screenplay: Barry Levinson
Writer of Book: Lorenzo Carcaterra
UK Release: 1997
Run time: approx 2 ½ hours
Score: John Williams

Review also published on ciao July 2009 - theshinyone

Summary: Revenge is a dish best served cold