Sleepers, 1996.
Directed by Barry Levinson.
Starring Kevin Bacon, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Bruno Kirby, Jason Patric, Brad Pitt, Brad Renfro, and Minnie Driver.
SYNOPSIS:
Barry Levinson’s minor 1996 classic Sleepers makes its 4K Ultra HD debut with a solid presentation on disc and a code for a digital copy. Unfortunately, you’ll only find two very short, albeit new, featurettes among the bonus features.
I don’t have fond memories of my school days, thanks to various incidents involving bullies, but that part of my life is a walk in the park next to what the kids in Sleepers go through. Written and directed by Barry Levinson, the 1996 film is based on a book that claims to be a true story but has been denied by the powers-that-be at the school where the horrific abuse is said to have occurred.
I think you can set aside questions about the story’s truthfulness, however, and appreciate that a lot of bad shit has happened to kids in similar circumstances. This story focuses on four of them: Lorenzo “Shakes” Carcaterra (played by Jason Patric as an adult and Joe Perrino as a kid), Michael Sullivan (Brad Pitt and Brad Renfro), John Riley (Ron Eldard and Geoffrey Wigdor) and Tommy Marcano (Billy Crudup and Jonathan Tucker).
After a prank the boys play goes horribly awry in New York City during the summer of 1967, they’re sentenced to serve time at Wilkinson Home for Boys in upstate New York. While there, head guard Sean Nokes (Kevin Bacon) enlists his fellow guards in physically and sexually abusing the four boys.
In 1981, John and Tommy have become career criminals, and when they come across Sean in a pub, they confront and kill him as revenge. Michael, who’s now an assistant district attorney, gets himself assigned to the case with a plan to do a poor job of prosecuting the pair while exposing the abuse from 24 years earlier.
Shakes helps Michael with the plan, which also includes bringing in an alcoholic defense lawyer, Danny Snyder (Dustin Hoffman) to defend the men. Michael tells Danny which witnesses to call and which questions to ask. Eventually, he must enlist Father Robert Carillo (Robert De Niro), who has known the boys since childhood, to help establish an alibi for John and Tommy. He’s also helped by Carol Martinez (Minnie Driver as an adult; Monica Polito as a child) as he tries to pull off the plot without revealing what he’s really doing, which, of course, would have major ramifications on his career.
Sleepers is a solid movie full of great performances, but I wouldn’t say any of them are of the “so wonderful they’re sublime” variety. I also find the emotion in Jason Patric’s voice-over performance a bit lacking, but your mileage may vary. Still, this is a film worth checking out if you haven’t seen it before and appreciate the cast.
This is the film’s debut in the 4K Ultra HD format, and it’s been restored from the original camera negative. Thankfully, the grain you’d expect to see in a movie of this vintage is still present; the detailing is also well-done and the black levels are solid, which is key since so much of Sleepers takes place at night or in places with low lighting.
In keeping with Warner Bros.’ recent trend, this is a single-disc release with a code for a digital copy. The extras consist of two very short featurettes running just under 15 minutes total. They both serve up Levinson talking about the film, but neither digs too deep, unfortunately.
I’m sure the interview shot with him was a lot longer, but maybe the decision was made to keep the extras short so there would be plenty of bandwidth available for the movie. If so, that wasn’t a bad idea, but it would have been nice to include more content with the digital copy. (I checked mine in Movies Anywhere and it only has the two featurettes.)
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
