Sleepers

Rating:
Summary: You simply have to see it!
Review: This is one powerhouse of a film! It has some of the most excellent performances ever captured on film, and it is a wonder to watch! Although disturbing, this is a film that everyone needs to see. It has a strong message and will haunt you long after it has ended. Buy it. You do not want to miss it!

*Parental discretion is advised. Contains mature subject matter.*

Rating:
Summary: A harrowing account of the loss of youthful innocence
Review: This is an amazing and at the same time a chilling, mournful movie about four boys who lost their innocence and their souls due to the horrifying perverted and brutal acts committed by men who were supposed to guard and protect them and the concequences after the brutalities that continued to haunt them years later.

Jason Patrick and Brad Pitt portray two of the youths in later life, and their haunted look is prevelant wherever they are. Minnie Driver is a woman who has known all the boys since childhood and Robert DeNiro is the priest who is the caretaker and finds out about the brutalities in the detention center years to late.

All of the actors in this movie do an outstanding job, Kevin Bacon is the character you love to hate in this movie, in one of the rare instances where he is evil in a movie. I wont go into the plot, but this is a movie that is for adults and not for children.

This is a movie that reaffirms that we all our responsible for the welfare and safety of children and if we are not responsible and if justice is not served then we all suffer for it.

Rating:
Summary: A complete waste of time if you have a shred of intelligence
Review: What sorrows me most is not that this movie was made, but that people actually like it. Even if I had removed my brain for the duration of the movie, I can't see how I could have enjoyed it. But with my brain intact, it was painful to watch. It has absolutely no depth. It's moral message--if it can be said to have any message at all--is "vigilante justice is good." But I'm sure the people who claim to enjoy watching this movie don't care about things like "moral messages." They just like seeing pedophiles getting shot and the killers going free. I feel truly sorry for people who don't think about how movies like this affect them and end up destroying their minds even more than they must have already been destroyed to enjoy these movies in the first place. The pleasure you may get from watching this movie and others like it--if you get any at all--will last you a couple hours; the damage to your mind may last for the rest of your life. The choice is yours.

Rating:
Summary: The best revenge rampage!
Review: Many of the previous reviewers covered the plot of the film. Some mentioned that the story is allegedly true, yet the NY State corrections board, or whoever governs the subject matter, denies it.

Is it true? Who knows. I doubt it is word for word. But even if only conceptually true, it was a wonder of revenge.

I think those denying the story's truth do so because the young guys who'd been miserably abused while youngsters in a "reform school" in New York essentially planned--and succeeded at!-- revenge. The opportunity slipped into their hands when two of the guys--older, and real thugs with murder raps longer than a linebacker's arm--ran across the chief abuser in one of their Hell's Kitchen watering holes. They did him in, and stood trial for it. One of the other abusees--and I'm talking about real abuse, not some recovered nonsense of Aunt Tilly spanking you when you were five--just happened to be a prosecutor. He was the real planner. He, and the character of the guy who wrote the book--then a budding journalist--worked with the Internal Affairs Dept. of the police, drug dealers, mobsters, and an inept, alchoholic attorney (Strange bedfellows? Also a reason to deny its truth?) to LOSE the case against the murderers, to expose other abusers (and the system), and make more public what they had undergone while in the state's "care." The planning, like any planning, had its weak points, in this case the key witness, a priest portrayed by none other than Robert DeNiro, who'd always stood by the boys from the time they were relatively harmless to now when they were dangerous.

As someone pointed out, DeNiro, after much painful discernment, perjured, and that was the key to a not guilty verdict.

I could see why they'd deny it: the justice system is supposed to work to ensure justice. How could one successfully PLAN to use it to ensure personal vengence??

Agreed with many a reviewer: the acting was great (though I admit I think Brad Pitt is one of the most overrated actors in Hollywood). The film is almost remarkably similar to the book; there were a few details left out of the film, and the religion of Dustin Hoffman's character was different in the film. (If I recall correctly, in the book he's an Irish Catholic, in the film he is probably Jewish). Maybe there are so many Irish Catholic attorneys in NYC that the producers feared a legal suit.

Sure, it's not a real happy ending. The murderers were dead before they were 30. But what sweet revenge! Come on, admit it. You've all sometimes felt that desire...

Within the couple of hours the film takes enough was shown of the background of the characters that describe where many of their attitudes and lifestyles may have come from. Bruno Kirby did a great job as Carcatarra's dad, an ex-con with a hot temper, and anecdotes of revenge. So, while there some inferable influence of the abuse on the murders' chosen career path (!) there wasn't a tone of "if it weren't for the abuse, they might have been life insurance salesmen in Westchester County." They probably would have spent the rest of their lives in Hell's Kitchen anyway!

An aside: I liked the reference too in the guys' background that they were altar boys (Dominus vobiscum...been there, done that...)at the funerals of Hell's Kitchen's Vietnam deaths. They may have seen us demonstrators on the tube, but they were too busy surviving--or getting drafted and NOT surviving--to worry about the stuff many of us had the opportunities to do.

Well done, Mr. Carcatarra (forgive my probable misspelling) and Mr. Levinson. I'll show it to many when we want a "good film" to watch, and I still hear the soundtrack frequently.

Rating:
Summary: If you can't do the time---don't do the crime
Review: Sleepers was a very powerful movie---Kevin Bacon gives a breakout performance as sadistic guard Sean Nokes. I liked the first half of the film better; thinking about the horrors that the 4 boys had to have endured can keep you awake at night. Brad Renfro and Geoff Wigdor get high fives too; they had the New York accents down cold.

Rating:
Summary: Very Powerful Film
Review: Sleepers is one of those films that has you talking about it long after it is finished. Based on a true story, Sleepers is definately an eye-opening experience.

All of the acting is fantastic, and you clearly get into the minds of all of the characters, especially when they are young boys at the beginning of the film. Kevin Bacon plays the ultimate villian, taking away their innocence. I truly despised his character, which means that he did his job and played his part well.

The young boys burried their painful memories deep inside of them, only to confront their nemisis later in life. The way the friends stick together is truly inspirational, and somewhat remarkable that they got as far as they did (Can't ruin the movie for you).

All in all, the film was exceptional and it flowed really nicely. Watching the horrors unfold, and then seeing the film all come together at the end was a truly pleasurable experience. You will not be disappointed with this film.

Rating:
Summary: Snuff evil in our midst
Review: This film is a masterpiece. It starts with a vision of children in Hell's Kitchen, a deprived neighborhood of New York City in the sixties, where four boys, deeply religious or at least deeply influenced by religion and a priest, one day sink into a prank that turns criminal. They destroy the cart of a hotdog vendor, a Greek man who is working hard to bring his family to the US, and by doing so cause severe injuries to an innocent man who is crushed by the cart. They are sent to a boys' institution. This film shows how some young guards or wardens take advantage of the kids to give way to their sadistic violence and their perverted peadophiliac sexual drives. It is hell and not reformation, the hell of rape, beating, torturing, sexual assault in all possible forms. That is the first dimension of the film. The second dimension is revealed by the fact that two of those four boys recognize the worst of these guards in a restaurant one night (twenty or so years later) and just kill him on the spur of the moment and out of cold blood. The other two boys will organize their defense, with the help of some older people of the community and the trial will be rigged by the prosecutor who is one of them and a lawyer hired to go along with the setup. The trial becomes then a full denunciation of the hell those kids have lived in, through the counter-examination of a prosecuting witness, one of the two particularly vicious guards, a good friend of the one who was killed. This witness will later be killed by some black people, because the band of guards he belonged to managed to kill the brother of a black artist because he stood in their way and tried to prevent the « torturing ». This is the second level of the film. The third level comes with the search, by the fourth friend and the girl who was associated to their group, for a witness to give them a perfect alibi on the night of the murder. They find that witness in the person of the priest who had been their close adviser and religious friend all along. He swears on the Bible to tell the truth, but he lies skillfully and unquestionably to give them the alibi they need to be acquitted. But he does not really lie, in the eyes of God, because for him the condemnation of such hellish boys' institutions is more important than the freedom of the two boys. He saves the boys (close to thirty by then) to force public opinion and justice to look into those institutions, thanks to his priestly authority. This reveals that in life you never have to choose between good and evil, the truth and a lie. You have to choose most of the time between two evils, two lies, and you have to ponder in your soul and mind, in your human and religious responsibility, to know which evil and which lie are worse and then decide to support the least evil and the least vicious lie, and then your « lying » is between you and your soul, between you and your ethics, between you and your God, if you believe in God. This level is absolutely superbly done. Finally the film is in a way pessimistic about society that can only move on from lesser lie to lesser lie, from lesser evil to lesser evil. Society improves because the lesser lies and evils are chosen by the men and women who have some kind of humane and humanistic inspiration, based on personal ethics or on their religious beliefs. This film should be shown to all teenagers to demonstrate to them how ugly life can be at times and how they have to react with their souls, minds, thinking and intelligence, rather than with a pre-constructed code of behaviour or a set of pleasure-directed spontaneous feelings. God always forgive a lie if it reveals some evil and enables our human society to correct this evil and hence improve. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Universities of Paris IX and II.

Rating:
Summary: Political drama without characters
Review: If you liked the Shawshank Redemption, this is probably your kind of movie. Personally I hated both. There's no realism here, no characters. Everything in this movie is meant to underline the highly questionable message that society and justice is the main cause of crime, a message that also goes at the expense of good moviemaking.

Rating:
Summary: Fiction or Nonfiction - Still A Compelling Story
Review: A lot of controversy surrounded "Sleepers" regarding the author's claim that his work was based on a true story which actually took place in New York's Hell Kitchen in the 1960's. The New York State Juvenile Authority and the New York City Police Department deny the story's veracity.

Nonetheless, the story is outstanding. Set in the 60's, it involves the lives of four boys and a girl from different families living in Hell's Kitchen on the West Side of Manhattan.

The story does a fine job or portraying the fact that these kids don't come from one of the "finer" New York neighborhoods of the day. They are the kids of single parents and hardworking blue collar folks. There is too much drinking at home, domestic disputes, and other glimpses of a hard life growing up.

The story kicks into high gear as the kids pass summer days sunning and getting into hijinks. One of their antics is to cheat the hot dog vendor out of his hot dogs. They do this once too often and a serious chase ensues where the hotdog vendor pursues one of the kids for blocks after he's been ripped off. The other three boys decide to move his hot dog stand so he'll have to look for it when he returns.

Tragedy occurs when there is a serious mishap with the hotdog cart that ends up hurting a man.

The boys are charged with stealing the hot dog cart and associated charges. They are sent to juvenile training school for rehabiliation together.

The Training School is hellish. Guards led by a mean, hateful Kevin Bacon; the kids are subjected to humiliation, solitary confinement, verbal abuse as well as physical and sexual abuse. Bacon does a masterful job of portraying a truly horrible human being who enjoys abusing kids.

Years later the boys get a chance for payback against the guards.

The story steps up from here as Brad Pitt (now an attorney) masterminds the punishment of the four guards who abused the boys most.

His tactics are effective. Yet, each of these men remain psychologically marked as a result of the destroyed innocence of their youth.

Robert DeNiro does an excellent job as the local parish priest who looks out for the boys. DeNiro plays a tough, caring man who is a wonderful minister for the kind of neighborhood his parish is located in.

Sleepers is memorable. Although there are some very difficult scenes, I believe the abuse portrayed within the Training School is not overly exaggerated. In a past time when guards were minimally screened or trained, the treatment kids received wasn't always the most professional.

I believe this will become one of tomorrow's classic movies.

Rating:
Summary: Not Pleased
Review: I really did not like that movie because Rizzo(Eugene Byrd) was killed for no reason. And he could have had more speaking parts. But I did like the close up shots of Mr. Byrd.