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List Price: $26.96 Our Price: $19.99 You Save: $6.97 Features • AC-3 • Closed-captioned • Color • Dolby • DVD-Video • Subtitled • Widescreen • NTSC In Theaters : 2007 DVD Release : 11 March, 2008 |
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Sleuth description Thirty-five years after Michael Caine played the role of crass boy-toy Milo Tindle in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s screen adaptation of Anthony Shaffer’s hit play Sleuth, the actor takes over his 1972 co-star Laurence Olivier’s role of rich cuckold Andrew Wyke in Kenneth Branagh’s updated remake of the same story. Where Olivier brought a seething, upper-class disgust to mystery-novelist Wyke’s attitude toward Tindle--who is having an affair with the former’s wife and has come to the writer’s mansion to request that Wyke divorce her--Caine basks in the comic absurdity of a superficial man like Tindle (Jude Law) led by the nose into one or another illusion of happiness. The new film’s script by Harold Pinter has the arid air of expectation familiar to his work, the weight of things not said whenever someone speaks. That’s a considerable weight indeed, in Sleuth’s story of a psychological contest between two very different men who despise one another beneath outward civility. The story finds Tindle arriving at Wyke’s home. Following various small humiliations, he is invited by the older man to steal his wife’s jewels in a scheme that benefits everyone. There’s more than meets the eye to Wyke’s proposal, however, leading to unexpected developments and surprises in the film’s second half. Branagh’s direction is suitably cool and sleek in the beginning, when the characters’ emotions are still in check and the oddness of Wyke’s gadget-filled world is still entertaining to behold. (The film’s set design is one of its strongest elements.) But once voices rise and threats appear and the like, Branagh can’t seem to penetrate the surface of things. Unlike Mankiewicz’s take, the new version is caught up in the insularity of the characters’ tit-for-tat gamesmanship, lacking the intriguing, class-warfare subtext of the earlier work. A gay angle thrown into the last half-hour sits uncomfortably and irrelevantly with the rest of the material. The best thing about this Sleuth are the performances of Law and Caine, who could have been even better with a great script. --Tom Keogh Stills from Sleuth (click for larger image)
Beyond Sleuth
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | Michael Caine returns for the other role in "Sleuth," but Harold Pinter's script is the main attraction this time around |
| Given the ongoing onslaught of remakes of films, both classic and trashy, that Hollywood has been overdosing on in recent years, there is an obvious impulse to label this new version of "[[ASIN:B00005R24G Sleuth]]" a remake of one of the few films in history in which the entire cast was nominated for acting Oscars ("[[ASIN:B000E7I736 Give Em Hell, Harry!]]" would be the other; "Who's Afraid of the Virginia Woolf?" would be on the list too if they had not undone the inherent claustrophobia of Edward Albee's play with the unnecessary road trip). However, usually when you are "remaking" a play, you stick to the play. Such is the case with the various versions of classics like "A Streetcar Named Desire," where the changes between the [[ASIN:B000EBD9TY Brando-Leigh)]] version and the one with [[ASIN:6304052723 Baldwin-Lange]] are relatively minute. However, what we have here is a reconcpetualization, courtesy of Harold Pinter. The key change is not simply updating Wyke's toys from games and puzzles to technology, but rather the way Pinter comes up with a totally new "third" act.
The point of reference for this movie should not be all of the remakes that Hollywood is infatuated with, but those rare reconceputaliations that are done for artistic rather than commercial reasons (the one that came to my mind the most while watching "Sleuth" was Akira Kurosawa's transformation of "[[ASIN:019832054X King Lear]]" into "[[ASIN:B000BB14YY Ran]]"). In that regard the key member of the production is not director Kenneth Brannagh but screenwriter Harold Pinter. Getting Pinter to do this script was pivotal, because it is difficult to fault a Nobel Laureate when he wants to reimagine a script like this. Plus, Pinter has a track record of transforming the works of others, proven once and for all time by his script for "[[ASIN:B00005LOKU The French Lieutenant's Woman]]." If playwright Anthony Shaffer were still alive no doubt he would have recruited to update his play, but he passed away in 2001. In that context getting Pinter (who had seen neither the play nor the movie) was a masterstroke). I am not surprised that things have come full circle with Michael Caine now playing the Laurence Olivier role; we have seen such things before (e.g., Patty Duke going from playing [[ASIN:B000056HEB Helen Keller]] to playing [[ASIN:B0007YN268 Annie Sullivan]] in "[[ASIN:0743457587 The Miracle Worker]]." But while Caine's presence gives legitimacy to the proceedings and Jude Law's performance is as fine as anything he has done to date, this "Sleuth" is really Pinter's show. Ultimately, I would maintain that this film is most decidedly not for those who have never seen the original because the ability to appreciate this "Sleuth" is predicated on your knowing the original story (notice that this time there are only names of two actors in the opening credits and not three). The danger here is to be lulled by your familiarity with the story that you ignore the way Pinter has changed things up during the first two "sets" to up the ante for the fatal finale. I still prefer the original as being one of the most effective twists I have seen in a movie (although I am sure it is much more effective on stage), but this one has its moments, most notably in the finale confrontation as Caine and Law engaged in the psychological duel that Pinter has crafted for them. This version is not as memorable as the original, but I did not expect it to be and I found it worth a look. |
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