Adam Cooper (director)
(studio)
18 (certificate)
110 (length)
23 December 2024 (released)
6 d
Russell Crowe may never again reach the commercial heights of Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind, but his acting has never been in question. And recent films have shown his versatility with his take on Zeus in the MCU, a multi-lingual exorcist in The Pope’s Exorcist and here in Sleeping Dogs a drink addled, washed up detective with memory problems.
Crowe plays Roy Freeman who has been early retired from the police after an accident left him with memory problems for which he is having experimental treatment.
He’s requested to review a case he handled years ago that sent a young man to jail and now awaiting the death sentence. Isaac (Pacharo Mzembe) insists he’s innocent. Freeman remembers very little but agrees to take the case on.
Contacting his old partner, the equally dishevelled Jimmy (Tommy Flanagan), they set about a review that has them digging into the depths of their relationship and local academic skullduggery.
Taking up much of the running time is the battle between brilliant academic Laura Baines (Karen Gillan), womanising academic Joseph Weider (Márton Csókás) and loser writer Richard Finn (Harry Greenwood) who are linked as lovers, collaborators and thieves.
Directed by Adam Cooper, co-written with Bill Collage, Sleeping Dogs asks quite a lot of the viewer being fairly slow, prone to purple prose and the backstory told in flashback through unreliable interrogations, interviews and memories.
The plot does some dancing about though it’s not overly complicated. What it does is provide the actors with plenty of flesh for their characters. The academic trio are repulsively hammy; people filled with arrogance and a complete disdain for almost everyone including each other.
Crowe has more to work with and elicits some sympathy as Freeman. His appearance that of a vagrant with a hulking gait, having lost his self-respect and confidence. Which is pitched against his days in the force as a reckless, suit and sunglasses detective.
Sleeping Dogs is available on Digital Platforms 23 December and DVD 24 December 2024. Distributed by Signature Entertainment
