| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Movie Name | Sleepers (1996) |
| Director | Barry Levinson |
| Writer | Lorenzo Carcaterra (novel), Ken Nolan (screenplay) |
| Lead Actor | Kevin Bacon |
| Cast | Kevin Bacon, Brad Pitt, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Patric, Billy Crudup |
| Genre | Crime, Drama, Thriller |
| Release Date | October 18, 1996 (United States) |
| Duration | 2h 27m (147 min) |
| Budget | $46 million |
| Language | English |
| IMDb Rating | 7.6/10 |
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Thorny issues are in this all-star production by Barry Levinson (Rain Man, Bugsy). This is an atrocity elicits revenge story, based on Lorenzo Carcaterra’s best-seller. (Claims to be factual have been widely challenged.) It’s set in the 1960’s in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, where four boys are sent to the state reformatory when a petty theft prank goes awry.
In prison, the kids are sadistically abused by the guards. (Levinson, to his credit, uses every conceivable film technique to imply, rather than show, the horror.) Years later, two of the boys, now adult hoodlums, come across the evil head guard (Kevin Bacon in his most corrupt mode) in a bar and calmly shoot him to death. Like A Time to Kill, Sleepers argues that sometimes murder is O.K., if there is no other way to achieve justice.
The tightly knit community of blue-collar white ethnics unites behind the killers and schemes to get them off. A godfather type (Vittorio Gassman) intimidates witnesses and hires a star lawyer (Dustin Hoffman) for the defense by threatening him. One of the four friends (Brad Pitt), now a city prosecutor, takes the case and sabotages it. But as the narrator (Jason Patric) explains, an alibi witness is still needed. Father Bobby (Robert De Niro), a lifetime friend with a reputation for integrity, is asked to do it. He agonizes over his decision, but his perjury and all the corruption of the legal system really achieve no good. Obviously, Levinson and Carcaterra think he’s a hero.
The four friends never really escape the scars of their terrifying ordeal. The scales are even but their bad dreams continue. Viewers can also judge Sleepers on their own. Movies used to support devotion to law under all kinds of pressure but now they’re starting to make exceptions. The courts have probably earned some criticism, but making a case for something as anciently stupid as revenge is truly amoral and dangerous. Ultimate abuse excuse drama, while artful, misses its best chances heavy and grim stuff for mature audiences.
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