In Adam Cooper’s directorial debut Sleeping Dogs, Russell Crowe (Gladiator, Virtuosity) plays Roy. A retired Washington county homicide detective. Based on the novel The Book of Mirrors with screenplay co-written by Cooper. Roy is vulnerable and grizzled, battling Alzheimer’s disease and recovering from an experimental procedure to stimulate regrowth of neural pathways. This part of the narrative gets a little odd in an already disjointed and awkwardly paced film. There’s fleeting teases throughout that the flick might turn into a decent thriller but it never quite reaches the goal post.
If you’ve seen and enjoyed movies such as Momento and Shutter Island, then you’ll pick the third act twist easily. Long before the inevitable payoff. Cooper blurs the line between rip off and pastiche. There’s just enough that’s different about Sleeping Dogs to set it apart but, there’s nothing new and unfortunately for Sleeping Dogs, the former films do it better.
Performances from Crowe, Tommy Flanagan (Sons of Anarchy), Karen Gillan (Avengers: Endgame) and Harry Greenwood (The Nightingale) are on point and interesting. Marton Csokas (The Last Duel) shines as Dr Wieder, the charismatic but untrustworthy murder victim. It’s the execution and edit that sees the film suffer. Flashback sequences combined with newsreel exposition is a lacklustre way to tell a story and disrupts the flow of the narrative. A few important scenes come across as one-and-done takes, failing to land the impact they’re reaching for. It all comes across as a direct to streaming affair at best, a bit amateurish at worst.
A good note though is cinematography from Ben Nott. Shooting and lighting various academic and urban locations of Melbourne as stand in for a US setting. These locations are presented warm and cold, depending on who’s point of view we’re following. When Crowe fills a scene and performs his character, one can’t help but feel the throbbing pulse of cold steel and sutures with those surgical wounds across his skull. The make up effects are subtle and effective.
Sleeping Dogs is disappointing in that you can see what Cooper is trying to do but can’t quite get there with this one. In Aussie cinemas since August 1st, the film rates a difficult 5/10 blunt force trauma wounds, for lacking the style and punch it needs to make it a good homicide thriller.
