Sleepers

1996

Action / Crime / Drama / Thriller

Plot summary


Uploaded by: OTTO

Top cast

Brad Pitt Photo
Brad Pitt as Michael
Robert De Niro Photo
Robert De Niro as Father Bobby
Jonathan Tucker Photo
Jonathan Tucker as Young Tommy
Kevin Bacon Photo
Kevin Bacon as Nokes
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
951.75 MB
1280*720
English 2.0
R
23.976 fps
2 hr 27 min
P/S 3 / 8
2.01 GB
1920*1080
English 2.0
R
23.976 fps
2 hr 27 min
P/S 3 / 22

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by MartinHafer9 / 10

Brilliant but not for everyone.

This film needs a couple strong warnings before you watch it or show it to someone else. First, it is an incredibly adult film filled with horrific violence--much of it directed towards children. It is NOT a film to show children or someone who hates violent films. Second, if you have been a victim of sexual and/or physical abuse, watching the film might bring up a lot of unwanted feelings and memories. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Despite these warnings, I am NOT saying to skip this movie. "Sleepers" is a brilliant and extremely well-constructed film that will keep you riveted on the screen. It is a film you simply can't ignore or feel ambivalent about, as it has so much to say and does it all so well--with wonderful performances, writing and direction.

The film begins with a horrific murder. Why these two men would see someone and then decide on the spot to brutally murder the guy is unknown--and you learn through the course of the film why this happened. Sure, the pair WERE career criminals and violent men, but there was far more to it than this...and it all stems from their troubled childhoods in a reform school from hell! And, you learn that the murder victim was no victim after all--the guy was a monster and truly deserved so much worse! What makes all this so interesting, however, is that the prosecutor happens to know EXACTLY why the man was killed, as he, too, had been sent to the reform school and knew about he horrors that occurred there. And so, despite his pledge to do his job and honor the law, he decides to deliberately do a horrible job in prosecuting--as he, too, is thrilled that they murdered the scoundrel.

What makes the film even better is that although this murder was justified, the film does NOT have a pat ending. In fact, the way it ends and the wonderfully realistic epilogue make the film. Terrific and honest in how it tells the tale--being truthful to the characters and story from start to finish. See this film...

Reviewed by bkoganbing7 / 10

Powerful and Flawed

You can draw a straight line between Sleepers and such films as The Mayor from Hell, Crime School, Knock on Any Door right up to the Nineties when Sleepers was released. All of those films from the bygone studio era were in whole or in part about the abuses in juvenile reform schools. Mix a small amount of Going My Way in there and you got Sleepers.

Going My Way, I'm sure a few laughs are being had with that one, but what is Robert DeNiro, but a very up to date Father O'Malley. Granted he isn't musical and he's not about to tame the tough kids of the neighborhood by making them a choir as Bing Crosby did, but in fact Bing and Barry Fitzgerald's parish was indeed in the Hell's Kitchen setting that Sleepers is. Bing and Frank McHugh tell a couple of lies as well for a good cause and he's as protective of his charges as DeNiro is of his. He's also an athlete like DeNiro and probably could get physical as DeNiro was ready to do after one of his kids is assaulted by his mom's boyfriend.

Sleepers is about four youths growing up in Hell's Kitchen in the sixties and what happened to them when a juvenile prank goes dramatically wrong. The four get sent to a youth facility where they are beaten and sexually abused by sadistic guards, chiefly Kevin Bacon. Two of them grow up to be stone cold killers and on a chance meeting with Bacon, pump several bullets in him and kill him.

The other two grow up to be Jason Patric, journalist, and Brad Pitt Assistant District Attorney. Of course they know what the real story in the killing is and set in motion a plan for revenge after a fictional hero they learned about in The Count of Monte Cristo.

The flaw with Sleepers is the fact it is based on the premise that because of juvenile records are sealed, no one will get the connection between Pitt and Patric, the defendants, and the victim in the case. That would have fallen apart by dint of the fact that any District Attorney's Office would do a deep background check on Pitt if he applied to work there. Those seals aren't completely inviolate, I doubt Pitt would have ever been hired in the first place.

This is the same criticism I had with another powerful drama about the justice system, 12 Angry Men. A deeply flawed premise is in the creation of that film as well. Doesn't prevent it from being a well done film and the same is the case with Sleepers.

DeNiro and Bacon come off best as the two influences on the kid's lives for good and evil respectively. I think you will also enjoy Dustin Hoffman as the alcoholic defense attorney and Vittorio Gassman as the neighborhood boss.

Even a flawed drama can be an enjoyable one.

Reviewed by SnoopyStyle6 / 10

The Count of Monte Cristo

It's Hell's Kitchen in the summer 1966. Lorenzo 'Shakes' Carcaterra, Tommy Marcano, Michael Sullivan and John Reilly are prankster best friends watched over by Father Bobby Carillo (Robert De Niro). The next year, they play a prank on a hot dog vendor that almost kills a man. They are all sentenced to Wilkenson Home for Boys in upstate New York where they are abused and beaten by the guards led by Sean Nokes (Kevin Bacon) and the other hardened inmates. In 1981, Tommy (Billy Crudup) and John Reilly (Ron Eldard) kill Sean Nokes. In prison, they tell Shakes (Jason Patric) that it's one down. Michael Sullivan (Brad Pitt) is now an assistant D.A. He decides to use the court case to bring the abuse out in the open unbeknownst to Tommy, Reilly and their alcoholic washed-up lawyer Danny Snyder (Dustin Hoffman) with a "slight drug problem". Carol (Minnie Driver) is a childhood friend who is now a social worker. Sleepers are anybody who spent time in juvy.

This is too long. The length is probably a problem without a good solution. It demands a ruthlessness from Barry Levinson that may be a little beyond. Every scene needs to be trimmed.

I don't like the narration. I don't usually like narration with some exceptions. This is not one of those exceptions. The adult narration also cause additional problems for the kids. The kids had problems to maintain screen presence but they keep getting interrupted by an adult version. The transition between the kids and the adults is a bit abrupt. It's hard to keep the 4 kids straight already. It's even harder to keep the 4 adults straight while maintaining the connection to their kid self.

The sexual abuse is a bit awkward. It has to be careful not to turn it into a melodrama. It goes overboard a few times for me. As for the courtroom, the movie struggles to maintain the tension. It's also a struggle to keep track of the plan. Overall, this is an ambitious movie with a few noticeable problems.

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