Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Cody One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Paul Magne Haakonsen I bought this movie solely because of Clive Owen being in it. However, this movie was a swing and a miss, and not even Owen could manage to salvage the pieces of this wreck of a movie.This is essentially a revenge movie, but not a good one, to be bluntly honest.The story is about Will, a former criminal now on the virtuous path to righteousness and a life free of crime. But when his brother is found dead under dire circumstances, Will sheds his newfound life and returns to his former dark past, seeking vengeance upon those whom wronged his brother.The concept idea seems fairly adequate, although generic and something that has been seen numerous times before. However, director Mike Hodges just managed to steer this movie off course and turn it into a very flaccid experience of a movie.The acting was adequate, although the actors and actresses very limited by the script, and it was showing on the screen.And the slow progress of the storyline also really hindered the movie to the point where it was becoming a drag to sit through. And I must admit that I was close to fully giving up on the movie twice, but I managed to stick with it to the very end.Clive Owen couldn't save the movie, nor could Malcolm McDowell.I was bored senseless with "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead", and as such, then this movie scores a meager three out of ten stars.

dmille The shot of Clive Owens clean shaven and dressed to the nines makes me wish they'd dump Daniel Craig and cast Owens as Bond. The scene between Owen and Malcolm McDowell was fantastic. When Owens turned around at the end of the driveway and came back to finish McDowell...wow! McDowell showed just enough relief and relaxation to make the kill shot payoff.On the other hand, Charlote Rampling is still a very good looking woman. But she is 18 years older than Owens. They didn't go deep enough into the backstory of their relationship. How did they end up together and why did they breakup? And the ending was too ambiguous. Do they both end up dead at the hands of that hit-man?

JOHNAMI The screenplay for this intertwined, revelation-by-revelation unraveling thriller is quite excellent. Davey Graham, the first major character we meet, is, on the one hand, charming, and on the other, a drug dealer and petty thief. His brother, Will Graham, who we meet as the film progresses, in a crime situation in which he is not directly involved and in which he acts as a sort of hero, was, at one time, a serious criminal known for his toughness and killings. He is lamenting his past life, and lives in a camper in a rural area far from the demanding city. Will has closed his heart to the professional and personal emotions associated with his past life. We learn that at first he continued to be in touch with the woman he loved, but then stopped writing her. He was also very close to his brother. For a time, he maintained their relationship by telephoning, but more recently has neglected any type of communication.Davey and Will, as portrayed by Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Clive Owen, are likable characters, but because they are criminal types an emotional attachment to them - on the part of the viewer - is guarded. This serves as a foundation for the more lurid aspects of the story which might have been distasteful or emotionally overwhelming had they been more innocent types.Davey, who is heterosexual, is totally unaware of his nemesis, and is fiercely raped by him while two men hold him down. He finds the attack so impossible to deal with that he commits suicide. It is difficult to understand the feelings associated with rape and how they could cause the suicide of someone who would not normally consider such an act. Rape is a tragic matter, infrequently examined in films. This screenplay effectively deciphers the issue through explanation of the character's lives.After the rape and suicide, Will, who knows nothing about them, has a spiritual experience and believes that he sees Davey in the waiting area of a boat crossing terminal, a totally unlikely location. This leads to the core of the film: Will's investigation and ultimate resolution of Davey's rape by killing the rapist, and Will having to deal with his past and the complex emotions associated with it.The sometimes slow pace of the film adds to the overall mood of characters being dragged down into situations they really do not want. The violence, which they both endure and cause, is, accordingly, an injustice and a result of their lives. In the end, Will finds that blocking out emotions only results in the dam overflowing.The direction and performances, overall, are very good.

johnnyboyz It was Claire Monk who wrote about the British male in British cinema being 'in crisis' from the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s; and here is a film produced a mere few years after that essay was published revolving around a man in a post-modern, self-depressive crisis of sorts that sees him being unable to face both friends, family and a complicated life in general. This is partly down to the protagonist's life prior to this film's events but I think there is a little more to it than mere guilt. The man in question is Will Graham, played by noir-journeyman Clive Owen in another lead role in a film made through Mike Hodges after 1998's Croupier. Will spends his days working honest but unspectacular work in an environment that distances most noir-anti heroes from reality: the rural setting. We also get a hint at his professionalism when, after being beaten and thrown out of a car full of thugs, Will helps a man by taking him to an address in the guy's wallet.The next morning we learn through Will's boss that there was blood on the road up where the beating took place. Will says it was just kids but we realise there was blood involved and that Will must've seen this blood; but we then realise it didn't deter him and this plants an intriguing seed in our minds in relation to what makes Will flinch. But at least the early study of Will is interesting: a man who is cut off from most others; a man who does not get on with modernity in the sense a computer error cost him his job; he drives an old car from the 1960s and when he enters the ferry waiting room, he is surrounded by machines and technology as he suffers an hallucination of the image of his brother back home. It is ultimately this bombardment of colour and gadgetry in an enclosed room used for housing people waiting to board boats that remove them from the land (or world) in which they currently inhabit that acts as the catalyst for Will's homecoming.I don't know for sure what the motivation was for Will to randomly 'see' his brother Davey in that room but director Mike Hodges is no newbie when it comes to film-making so it might have something to do with Will being 'in crisis' at specific times. But the film despite these promising roots is a this-and-that experience of film noir, forever set amongst dreary locations and shot mostly at night in a world that is the side of London the tourists don't see. The criminal element and the inclusion of the voice-over at the very beginning as the film enters one long flashback are other pointers that really just do more harm than good in the sense they definitively place the film within a genre. But the film is slightly muddled in an artistic sense and slightly muddled in a narrative sense. I say slightly because things like the golfer whacking balls on the beach into the sea didn't bother me as much as they lost me. Similarly, the entire ideation behind why villain of the piece Boad (McDowell) does what he does is a bit of a letdown.I think the one thing that hinders I'll Sleep When I'm Dead the most is its overall approach to its story. The idea behind someone returning to confront past demons as he investigates the murder of a loved one is good and an idea executed in the past really well, not least by Hodges himself in 1971's Get Carter. That worked because the detective route and the overall narrative for the film was on the backburner for most of the time as Carter himself confronted hard-bodied northern archetypes; attempted to infiltrate establishments whilst mixing in amongst the pornography industry that acted as a plot point in the process. In this film, there is no real feeling of immediacy nor is there much tension during this time. Will has the time to engage in rather bland conversation with Helen (Rampling) which didn't really go anywhere and the overall antagonism towards fellow gangster Tuner (Stott) is flat and lacks conflict.That said there is perhaps one good scene, where Will and some of his allies made up of familiar British faces Jamie Foreman and Geoff Bell meet up as well as the instance when a guy is found still alive in a body bag on someone's porch after Will's been at him. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead is a slow burner, perhaps mercifully so because too much of a 'gangster-light' approach would've made this slightly worse than it is, but the film has some good eerie music and even though the tension and conflict lacks, the film feels as if it is building to something largely due to Owen's expressionless performance as the confused and disturbed Will. But the film will not appeal to a large crowd and despite feeling as if it's building to something, the dénouement is anti-climatic and the circular journey is then complete, end of. It's a good example of a contemporary British noir with a British lead male in crisis but apart from that, sadly, there is not a whole lot else going on.