Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Sleepers Blu-ray Movie Review

Revenge Is Cold Comfort

Reviewed by Michael Reuben August 5, 2011

Sleepers is an adaptation of a memoir by Lorenzo Carcaterra that the author insists to this day is true. However, all broadcast and video versions, including this Blu-ray, carry disclaimers before the end credits by various New York governmental authorities disputing Carcaterra's account -- which isn't surprising, given how badly they're portrayed. Carcaterra acknowledged in his prologue to the book Sleepers that he'd altered names, dates, places and personal details to protect identities, but he insisted that "this is still my story and that of the only three friends in my life who have truly mattered". The same words are spoken in voiceover by the character "Shakes", who is Carcaterra's alter ego in the book and film.

Viewers and readers of Sleepers may feel that the story is too melodramatic to be believable, but melodrama often gets an unfair rap. One of America's great directors, the late Sidney Lumet, loved the genre, believed that it portrayed essential human truths and delighted in pointing out that revered works of art are often melodramas (he cited Hamlet and Oedipus Rex, but many of Lumet's classics could have been included). "In a well-written drama", Lumet once said, "the story comes out of the characters, and in a well-written melodrama, the characters come out of the story." In Sleepers, both the story and the characters come out of Hell's Kitchen in New York City, whose peculiar character defines the four protagonists and sets them on their paths in life. The story's tragic irony is that it's the outside world, the realm of law and order and fine, upstanding social institutions, that brutalizes them and damages them for life.

With the aid of their old neighborhood, Shakes and his friends finally achieve some measure of justice, but Carcaterra was too honest a writer, and writer-director Barry Levinson's adaptation was too faithful, to let the their revenge be anything but a melancholy necessity. Maybe that's why audience response to the film was weak when it was released in the fall of 1996; after almost two and a half hours of heartache and intrigue, viewers wanted more uplift than Sleepers provides. No doubt there was also some disappointment upon discovering that many of the film's biggest names (among them, Brad Pitt and Dustin Hoffman) didn't appear until an hour into the film, and then only as part of an ensemble. Still, it's a great ensemble. If you've only seen Hoffman and Robert De Niro together in the Focker films, watch the courtroom exchange in Sleepers where Hoffman's alchoholic lawyer questions De Niro's priest for an idea of what pros like these can do with even a short scene where the subject really matters.

It's not worth throwing a life away just to get even. - Fat Mancho

Sleepers is roughly divided into two parts, the first set from 1966 to 1968 and the second in 1981. The leads are four boyhood friends:

• Lorenzo "Shakes" Carcaterra, played by Joseph Perrino as a boy and Jason Patric as an adult.
• Michael Sullivan, played by Brad Renfro (who died in 2008 at age 25 from a heroin overdose) as a boy and by Brad Pitt as an adult.
• John Reilly, played by Geoffrey Wigdor as a boy and by Ron Eldard as an adult.
• Tommy Marcano, played by Jonathan Tucker as a boy and by Billy Crudup (in his first film) as an adult.

As children and adults, they all know the same girl from the neighborhood: Carol Martinez, played by Monica Polito as a child and by Minnie Driver as an adult.

Childhood in the Hell's Kitchen of the 1960s is an odd mixture of sheltered and worldly. It's an insular, working class, racially diverse community where the Sixties pass unnoticed (except on TV), domestic violence against women is a routine occurrence, and crime is not only tolerated but respected -- just not against members of the community and especially not against children. In the words of the adult Shakes, it was "a place of innocence ruled by corruption". Shakes, Michael, John and Tommy are a happy-go-lucky gang, full of promise and possibility, but they're pulled in opposite directions by two very different role models. One is Father Bobby (De Niro), a local priest who grew up on the same streets and has no illusions about how his parishioners live (one of his best friends is serving life for a triple murder). The other is King Benny (Vittorio Gassman, who all but steals the film), the local godfather who rarely leaves his bar, because everyone comes to him. After hearing stories from his father (Bruno Kirby) of King Benny's exploits, Shakes asks him for a job. Before long, all four friends are running his errands.

Everything changes when the kids accidentally injure a bystander while ripping off a hot dog vendor. They're arrested and sentenced to terms ranging from six to eighteen months at the Wilkinson Home for Boys, where they're targeted by a group of guards led by Sean Nokes (Kevin Bacon). For months, the boys are secretly beaten, tortured and raped. Nokes and his cohorts -- Ferguson (Terry Kinney), Addison (Jeffrey Donovan) and Styler (Lennie Loften) -- threaten them with worse if they talk, and on one occasion, after losing a touch football game to an inmate team, the guards beat a boy named Rizzo (Eugene Byrd) to death. Childhood ends for these kids, and their friendship is replaced by something deeper and more painful: a shared vow of silence and a determination to seek revenge if the chance ever arises.

The chance presents itself fourteen years later. One night, Tommy Marcano and John Reilly -- now grown men and founders of the deadly West Side Boys gang -- spot Sean Nokes, now a security guard, having dinner in McHale's pub. They walk up, identify themselves and calmly riddle him with bullets in front of witnesses. Unperturbed, they're arrested and charged with murder.

Michael Sullivan has become a lawyer working for the District Attorney's office and lobbies to get the case, arguing that he has a "feel" for the neighborhood. Secretly, though, Michael has devised a revenge plan worthy of Edmond Dantès in The Count of Monte Cristo, his favorite book. Using intermediaries to communicate with Shakes, now a journalist, and Carol, now a social worker, Michael enlists all of Hell's Kitchen, including King Benny and eventually Father Bobby, in an elaborate plot to expose Nokes's past. The plan involves a rigged trial, manipulated testimony, secret investigations of the three guards who worked with Nokes (all of whom have moved on to other careers, some of them crooked), tips to the NYPD's internal affairs division, the purchase of gambling markers, negotiations with an up-and-coming drug lord known as Little Caesar (a young Wendell Pierce, currently on Treme), and the machinations of a substance-abusing defense attorney named Snyder (Dustin Hoffman) who's seen better days, but rises to the occasion when he finds himself in the unaccustomed position of speaking for a righteous cause.

The irony of Sleepers' 1981 section is that, for real justice to be done, all the institutions of "justice" have to be subverted. True testimony has to be scared off or discredited; perjured testimony has to be procured and then corroborated by phony documentation; and an entire trial has to be staged and rigged so that two killers can be exonerated. But is the ultimate outcome in Sleepers really justice? Is it even the "sweet revenge" that Michael Sullivan imagined when he cast himself as a modern day Count of Monte Cristo? In the voiceover prologue at the beginning of the film, Shakes says that he's the only one who can speak for his friends and for "the children we once were". Throughout the 1981 portion of the film, images of those children recur, in edits, dissolves and superimpositions, as if to remind us that those children are not only in the past, but stand on the other side of a chasm torn across the paths of their lives by a cataclysm that nothing can undo. In a kind of epilogue, Shakes recounts what became of each friend after the trial, then turns back for one last look at their childhood selves, as if he were observing strangers. "The future lay sparkling ahead", he says, "and we thought we would know each other forever." But how can you know each other when you no longer recognize yourself?

Sleepers Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sleepers was released on a so-called "flipper" DVD in 1997, which means that it was split between two sides of a double-sided disc, because back then the industry hadn't yet perfected double-layer DVDs. This Blu-ray is the first reissue of the film in region 1; so it's hardly surprising that the image is an upgrade in every respect. Cinematographer Michael Ballhaus created several different styles for Sleepers. In the 1960s sequences, images tend to be more brightly lit and the pallette is dominated by cheerier colors, with frequent pastels. As soon as the film reaches Wilkinson, the pallette becomes muted, at times almost to the point of monochromatic; some scenes are genuine black-and-white, as are flashbacks later in the film. The 1981 portion of the film uses darker, richer tones, and not just because so many scenes occur at night or in indoor locations with dark decor, whether it's a courtroom, King Benny's bar or Little Caesar's office. The darkness of the 1981 sequences is thematic, with plots, secrets and skulduggery all around.

The Blu-ray's 1080p, AVC-encoded image handles these carefully orchestrated color shifts effectively and accurately. Detail is excellent, as is apparent in, e.g., the fine appearance of clothing patterns and the elaborate period decor on the streets of Hell's Kitchen, as well as the crowded furnishings in residences like Carol's apartment. Black levels are very good, which is essential for scenes like the clandestine meeting between Shakes and Michael just after Michael has gotten himself appointed to try the Nokes murder. They meet late at night and step in and out of shadows, but you can always make out the details of their expressions.

I have read suggestions that DNR was applied to this transfer, but I did not observe any motion artifacts, loss of fine detail or waxy complexions that are the trademarks of such digital filtering. The Blu-ray is remarkably free from any visible grain, but Sleepers has always had a notably smooth and grainless texture, despite the fact that it wasn't completed on a digital intermediate (and notwithstanding the categorical declarations of those who declare that Super35 photography is always, always grainy).

Sleepers Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Though it is a dialogue-driven film, Sleepers includes a number of sequences where sounds other than speech are used for effective storytelling, and the DTS lossless track reproduces these forcefully. One example is a touch football game that becomes something more; the game is intercut with scenes from its aftermath and acquires tremendous impact from the contrast between the expansive roar of the players and onlookers in all five speakers with the quiet scenes featuring a single individual afterward. Scenes in subways, especially a meeting between Carol and Michael, use the entire soundfield, including the subwoofer, to convey the New York MTA's full sonic assault. A particularly interesting use of sound occurs late in the film, when gunfire is shown but not heard, because it's being drowned out by a plane taking off, the sound of which is conveyed at full volume through the entire system. In short, even though Sleepers may not become your latest "demo" disc, you won't regret having your system well-balanced and adjusted.

Even if there were nothing else, the soundtrack of Sleepers would merit the best playback system possible for John Williams' excellent score, which is notable because it demonstrates the great composer's range. Meditative, worldly, almost (but not quite) mournful, Williams hits exactly the right bittersweet note for this tale oddly balanced between triumph and tragedy. It was the film's only Oscar nomination and well-deserved.

Sleepers Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Theatrical Trailer (SD; 1.33:1; 2:16). It's an effective trailer, but it does reinforce the impression that the parts played by the film's "name" stars are much bigger than they really are.

Sleepers Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It was disappointing at the time, and it remains disappointing fifteen years later, that Warner has made no effort to assemble any comments, thoughts or recollections from the creative talent that made Sleepers. Even if the actors and director were unavailable, it would have been interesting to hear from the production designer, cinematographer and effects people about recreating the look of vintage Hell's Kitchen streets after the passage of thirty years (and a lot of gentrification). It's hard to believe that Carcaterra would have been unwilling to provide a commentary track, given his role as co-producer and his personal investment in the story.

Still, the film itself is what counts, and the Blu-ray edition of Sleepers provides excellent audio and an image that, while not eye-popping, is accurate and pleasing to the eye. And since the film was never available on region 1 DVD in anything but a "flipper", this upgrade to Blu-ray is an easy decision. Highly recommended.