The Russell Crowe renaissance feels like it\u2019s just around the corner. Although I’ve been saying that since “The Nice Guys,”\u00a0so I could be wrong.\u00a0He\u2019s undeniably reached a phase of his career in which he has nothing left to prove, and he\u2019s often the best thing about every project he\u2019s in. (He made \u201cThe Pope\u2019s Exorcist\u201d so much better than it would have been with anyone else in that part, and I kinda hope they make five more.) It really just comes down to the right filmmaker having faith in his natural ability. This is the reason I was drawn to Adam Cooper\u2019s \u201cSleeping Dogs,\u201d a film that looked like it could be Crowe\u2019s \u201cMemento,\u201d a twisty noir that plays with memory, perception, and a very unreliable narrator. While Crowe gives more to this drowsy film than it deserves, it actually has me concerned now that the Oscar winner might head in the other direction, getting sucked into the world of cheapie VOD thrillers that have dominated the resumes of actors who used to be more discerning (sorry, Travolta fans). Crowe is better than \u201cSleeping Dogs.\u201d Most actors are.<\/p>\n
Based on The Book of Mirrors<\/em> by E.O. Chirovici, \u201cSleeping Dogs\u201d opens with its protagonist deep in the waking nightmare of dementia. Retired cop Roy Freeman (Crowe) has taped notes around his house that remind him of not only basic things like how to make toast but his own name. Of course, this is going to be one of those films with a \u201cplot-convenient illness,\u201d a particularly egregious bit of illness exploitation in my opinion,\u00a0one that holds the protagonist back when the plot needs it to or just disappears when it\u2019s time to build momentum. Roy is also undergoing some radical treatments that involve brain surgery and constant medication because why not?\u00a0The set-up allows a traditional cop character to investigate a crime he once closed as if he\u2019s doing so for the first time. Anyone who has ever seen a movie knows he will re-discover some things he forgot for a reason.<\/p>\n The re-investigation is launched by the imminent death row execution of Isaac Samuel (Pacharo Mzembe), convicted for the bloody murder of a professor and researcher named Dr. Joseph Wieder (Marton Csokas), a decade earlier. Samuel is obviously innocent\u2014no movie otherwise\u2014and flashbacks reveal that he was there when Wieder was murdered but didn\u2019t see the doctor\u2019s assailant. Roy decides to dig into the case, taking him back into the path of his former partner Jimmy Remis (Tommy Flanagan, trying to out-grizzle his co-star), who keeps encouraging Roy to let sleeping dogs lie. Get it? That\u2019s the title of the movie. <\/p>\n Of course, Roy, despite dealing with a condition that has decimated his life, decides to re-open the case fully, starting with the recently-and-suspiciously-deceased Richard Finn (Harry Greenwood), who wrote a sort of true crime memoir about the Wieder murder. Finn\u2019s partner Laura Baines (Karen Gillan) was research partners\u2014and maybe more\u2014with Wieder, and she\u2019s clearly one of the keys to what happened that night. Cooper\u2019s film fractures into a long flashback of the weeks leading up to the crime through Finn\u2019s eyes\/voice, but we\u2019re never quite sure how seriously we\u2019re supposed to take it. It\u2019s not just that writing that describes Laura as \u201cone of those rare unicorns who knew everything about everything\u201d can\u2019t possibly be taken seriously but that Finn could be playing with the artistic license of his form or may not have all the facts himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Russell Crowe renaissance feels like it\u2019s just around the corner. Although I’ve been saying that since “The Nice Guys,”\u00a0so I could be wrong.\u00a0He\u2019s undeniably reached a phase of his career in which he has nothing left to prove, and he\u2019s often the best thing about every project he\u2019s in. (He made \u201cThe Pope\u2019s Exorcist\u201d …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[45,47,37],"class_list":["post-1224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thriller-movies","tag-drama","tag-mystery","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}