Sleepers

 2/4

Starring: Jason Patric, Brad Pitt, Robert DeNiro, Minnie Driver, Vittorio Gassman, Kevin Bacon, Dustin Hoffman, Joe Perrino, Brad Renfro, Geoffrey Wigdor, Jonathan Tucker, Frank Medrano, Billy Crudup, Ron Eldard

Rated R for Language, Graphic Violence and Two Scenes of Strong Sexual Content

I've always found that a person coming to terms with their past can be fertile ground for powerful drama.  Film has tackled this numerous times.  Sometimes, such as in "Casablanca" or "The Debt," it does so successfully.  Other times the filmmakers are too frightened to do so in a direct manner, like with the overrated "Mystic River."  "Sleepers," which ironically bears a strong similarity to the Clint Eastwood picture, is one of the latter.  Despite a gifted filmmaker behind the camera and a cast to die for, "Sleepers" never involved me.  Director Barry Levinson never finds a successful way to present the story.  Tonally, the film veers from wannabe Scorcese to Hollywood feel good.  The characters are paper thin, relying more on the charisma of its stars to give them personality.  And the story, despite allegedly being based on a true story, isn't as clever or as interesting as one might suggest.

Hell's Kitchen, 1968.  Four friends named Lorenzo "Shakes" Carcaterra (Perrino), Michael Sullivan (Renfro), Tommy Marcano (Tucker) and John Reilly (Wigdor) are as close as brothers.  They are looked after by the street smart priest, Father Bobby (DeNiro) who counsels them to stay away from the local mob boss King Benny (Gassman), but he pays well.  They share a love of pranks, and when a quest to steal a hot dog goes disastrously wrong, the four boys are unprepared for the consequences.  They are sentenced to a year at a reform school where they are brutally tortured and raped by sadistic guards, the worst being a vile creature named Nokes (Bacon).  Years later, Tommy and John murder Nokes in cold blood.  Now Michael and Shakes see an opportunity to settle the score.

In order for this story to work, two things must occur.  We have to see the characters as people we can care about, and buy into the world and value system that would allow the characters to act the way they do.  Neither one happens here.  Shakes and his friends remain stick figures; neither they nor anyone else achieve the level of individuality to where we see them as more than pawns of the screenwriter.  Similarly, the gritty street values of the neighborhood are window dressing.  It's sketched out by Shakes unending voiceover, but we don't feel it.  It heightens the contrivance necessary to make the story work and further distances us from the characters.  It "tells" us how their world operates, rather than shows it.  The only person who works is Father Bobby, and that's because he is the only character written with any depth.  The fact that he's played by the legendary Robert DeNiro only helps.

The rest of the cast, made up of legends, stars and up and comers, is impressive.  Brad Pitt, Jason Patric, Minnie Driver, the late Brad Renfro, Dustin Hoffman and a genuinely vile Kevin Bacon all make appearances.  Future stars include Jonathan Tucker, Billy Crudup and Ron Eldard.  The legendary Vittorio Gassman does a lot with the thinly written character of the local mob boss; he's better than the screenplay deserves.

Even at 2.5 hours, the film feels too short.  Characters are introduced just so their part in Michael's scheme can be explained.  Everything feels like it was done in shorthand, and Levinson needs to resort to an unending voiceover by Shakes to keep the audience up to speed with the goings on in the story.  A voiceover can be an effective filmmaking tool, but not when it feels like CliffNotes to the story that was added in at the last minute.  A more intimate screenplay could have given much of the information to the audience by showing these behaviors and scenes rather than having Shakes tell us.

"Sleepers" doesn't work because it doesn't find a successful way to tell the story.  It's so busy explaining everything that neither the characters nor the story have any room to breathe.  As a result, the story doesn't feel genuine and it leaves a bad taste in our mouths because we don't buy into the value system that the characters behave in.  With this high of a caliber of talent in front of and behind the camera, it is totally acceptable to expect more than what "Sleepers" offers.  Which is to say, it should be better than just an episode of "Law and Order."