Sleeping Dogs, 2024.
Directed by Adam Cooper.
Starring Russell Crowe, Karen Gillan, Marton Csokas, Tommy Flanagan, Thomas M. Wright, Harry Greenwood, Elizabeth Blackmore, Lynn Gilmartin, Jane Harber, Ming-Zhu Hii, Lucy-Rose Leonard, Pacharo Mzembe, Simon Maiden, Paula Arundell, Jasper Bagg, and Cameron Leonard.
SYNOPSIS:
An ex-homicide detective (Russell Crowe) with memory loss is forced to solve a brutal murder, only to uncover chilling secrets from his forgotten past.
In an age where law enforcement is consistently, justifiably under scrutiny, there is a tantalizing concept in Sleeping Dogs that not only does Alzheimer’s-suffering former homicide detective Roy Freeman (Russell Crowe, reliable as always) find himself re-connecting the dots to a 10-year-old case in hopes of getting a potentially innocent incarcerated man (Pacharo Mzembe) off death row, but also unearthing whether or not he was an upstanding and righteous detective.
People are always changing, so there is a fascinating element in essentially watching a man with amnesia piecing together an entire occupational history he has no recollection of to see if anything clicks or if he even stands by some of his actions anymore. It’s akin to judging oneself by staring into a mirror (the film is based on E.O. Chirovici’s novel Book of Mirrors), but it’s not long before director Adam Cooper (co-writing the screenplay alongside Bill Collage) falls deep into a rabbit hole of suspect flashbacks and interviews sluggishly attempting to mask what really happened in a particular case. Even Alzheimer’s becomes more of a plot detail and less of something critical to Roy or how it affects his ability to reconstruct the case and the memories of his investigative involvement.
For whatever reason, Sleeping Dogs is also aesthetically hideous, with washed-out colors presumably mimicking Roy’s fractured state of mind; this is a questionable choice considering how relentlessly ugly the film looks. However, far more frustrating is that, as characters are introduced individually, it immediately becomes clear how they fit into the endgame and who did what beyond the specific reasons. These characters range from Roy’s close friend and homicide detective partner Jimmy (Tommy Flanagan), a psychologist named Laura Baines (Karen Gillan) performing experiments with her professor Joseph Wieder (Marton Csokas), and a literary memoir writer named Richard Finn (Harry Greenwood) with an obsessive crush on her.
Nearly 10 years ago, someone broke into Joseph’s home and murdered him, with the investigation jumping to the easy conclusion that it was the struggling Black man who had tried to steal from the home and could be placed at the scene of the crime, even if there were other figures involved with actual motives. A good chunk of Sleeping Dogs are flashbacks comprised of Richard’s novel explaining what happened and his relationship with Laura, but within those scenes, he openly admits literary memoirs are a matter of perspective, meaning that from the POV of understanding the case and this movie, he is an unreliable narrator and everything he has to say is already sketchy, also suggesting that whatever happens in these 30 minutes is somewhat pointless.
That’s a recurring issue with Sleeping Dogs, repeatedly dropping the fascinating character study aspect of Roy to dive into boring stretches that summarize who other characters are rather than explore them in any meaningful way. Again, it all leads to some unsurprising reveals, with one final twist directly, personally connecting Roy to the murder in a stupidly unexpected way.
Even when trying to ignore or overlook how uninspired and contrived this all is to engage with some of the ideas the film presents about memories, trauma, the benefits of forgetting, and what is lost when certain events disappear from the mind, it’s a losing battle since the story is more interested in the generic and formulaic aspects of the murder mystery (and not at all interested in the life of the innocent Black man about to be executed.) Sleeping Dogs sleepwalks through its interesting ideas, with Russell Crowe trying his best to bring out some depth, but unsuccessfully so, as the story consistently pivots away from the strengths.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
