Rating: 
Summary: A life changing story
Review: This is a very heart pounding film about true friendship. It makes you want to cry and leaves you extremely depressed. I sugget reading the book as well to give the movie more heart. The actors are all equally excellent and stay very true to who the characters are. The best film ever made.
Rating: 
Summary: Too slick
Review: Sleepers purports to tell the story of a group of boys who, growing up in Hell's Kitchen in NYC, straddle the line between good and evil, and are thrown over the line after their brutal stay at an up-state reform school. Sharing an oath while still young to never disclose the cruelties they've endured, especially sexual brutalization at the hands of a group of guards led by the sadistic Nokes (Kevin Bacon), the group grows into scarred and withdrawn men. With their juvenile records sealed, their inner pain is the only sign of their suffering. Lorenzo (Jason Patric) goes to work for the New York Post, and unsurprisingly becomes the narrator for this tale of woe. Two of the other boys aren't so lucky, becoming coke-addicted Westies-like contract killers, doomed to die before they hit 30. In an inexplicable coincidence, the pair happen across the hapless Nokes in a Manhattan eatery, and extract a cruel revenge. .... In a lucky turn, the subsequent murder prosecution is handed to Michael (Brad Pitt), an ADA and the fourth of the unlucky boys. In a bid to enhance the revenge they all want, Michael plots to throw the trial, revealing Noke's uncharted history as a sexual predator to do the defense attorney's job of raising reasonable doubt. Because some of the prosecution's witnesses were also former reformatory guards, the defense has an opportunity to discredit them and reveal their sins. Those not exposed on the stand are tagged by other contract killers, whether related to our heroes or to other boys brutalized at the reformatory. Besides covering the trial, Lorenzo's job is to protect Michael from retaliation for heading the prosecution against his former friends. As the trial progresses, Michael and Lorenzo are forced to break their oath and reveal what they endured to Father Bobby (Robert De Niro) and Carol Martinez (Minnie Driver playing latina), a local girl and single mother loved by each of the four boys.Despite the premise, Sleepers loses it for me. The great pains the film takes to jar your senses and convince you of its authenticity makes the flick look shallow and manipulative. The script bathes itself in an underworld cool of local gangsters and dark secrets that looks very Hollywood, and Lorenzo' voice-overs don' help. "It was 98 degrees on the day our lives changed forever" gives you some clue as to the New York Post style realism that pervades the film and undermines its credibility (Carccaterra's position with the New York Post seems about the only credible thing in this movie). The courtroom looks like some unconvincing Hollywood set (probably the reason why the film requires a screaming subway to cut across now and then). What really kills me is the shallow and high-minded moralism of the film, with characters like Fat Mancho pontificating about justice-for-sale, and ignoring the top-flight cast (with matching paychecks) the movie leans on heavily. De Niro and Hoffman are totally wasted here. As a father I can't easily ignore the cries of victimized children, but I found this film's slickness an insultingly manipulative vehicle for dealing with that horror.
Rating:
Summary: Good intentions, evil effects
Review: We have to move from the obvious center of the story, a group of young kids who became adults in very difficult circumstances : those of Hell's Kitchen in New York, to the priest who is a permanent reference all along. He wants to bring those kids to some kind of salvation that could mean priesthood for some of them. He fails, and it is his being too lenient that causes the drama of their life : their imprisonment in a very special Boys' educational detention center. But two of the boys will turn criminal and kill one night one of the ex-wardens in whose hands they had suffered hell and blazes. The priest will save them from due punishment and his lie, in the name of the necessary correction of the evil performed in this detention center, will push the two young men into more crimes and a violent death. The dilemma of the priest between improving the world and saving the souls of young people is set wrong from the very start : souls can only be saved with love and strict rules set by God himself, not with permissiveness : the latter has a tendency to reproduce evil more than to correct it and hence to save souls. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
Rating:
Summary: Sleepers
Review: Very well put movie . Made me want to cry for the 4 boys and what happened to them in that wilkinson home for boys . As much as I love Kevin Bacon this movie sure made me want to hate him for what he did to the boys . Brad Pitt was brilliant in how he got back at all the guards for what they had done . This is a 5 STAR movie if I ever saw one .
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: This is a powerful and moving film. You are not likely to finish viewing it with dry eyes.
Rating: 
Summary: This story does not need to be told.......
Review: However, the film was great. Kevin Bacon is one of my all time favorite actors. I did not like him playing this roll. He is a very nasty person in this film. The story is well told. The film does an excellent job of creating the characters and telling their lives. The end is sudden and unexpected. It's definitely worth watching. But be ready for some unpleasant scenes. Be ready to see things that you don't want to know about.
Rating:
Summary: Overrated Peice of Film Trash
Review: Lets examine this movie. It starts out expressing how a few kids are pulling boyish pranks and being kids. Oh kay, lets go on, they go on to pull one prank that ends up hurting someone badly. Then they are ordered to endure a jail sentence in a home for boys. They suffer sexual abuse by kevin bacon and a few other guards. Unfortunately the plot advancement is VERY poor. It jumps around like wildfire and is not the least bit steady. This movie screams, look at me! I am incredible! unfortunately, thats how it feels, it feels like this movie was made just for shock value. After the very poor scenes at the home for boys, we are taken to the next disc. The boys are now involved in gangs and are grown up. The adult actors are mediocre at best, the roles are hollow and dont show very much emotion at all. The adults go on to kill kevin bacon in revenge when they notice him at a bar. Then the boys go on to fix the court so that the two adults will get off. Then the movie goes on to say something like "This and that happened", its easy to give a happy ending with about 3 sentences isnt it? Unfortunately this movie was not disturbing as some might put it, it promotes homophobia and has poor plot advancement, Robert Deniro is great but the rest of the cast is no less than "okay". If you like this movie I recommend bless the child... Hrmph
Rating:
Summary: Like watching the book.
Review: Like "Disclosure", "Sleepers" is the case of another movie where I can say that both the book and the film are of equal quality. I have read the book several times and still enjoy reading it. Sharp observers, however, will note the fair amount of dialogue in the movie which---for lack of a better way to put it---sounds like it's been lifted right from the book. Depending on your point of view, that can be either a good thing or a bad thing, I guess. Examples would include: Nokes's death at the hands of the adult John & Tommy in the bar, the hot dog cart scenes, and the football game. Despite all of my nitpickings, this is still a great dramatic flick. And no, the sadism scenes are not nearly as graphic as their depiction in the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Entertainment, but oscar-less for a reason
Review: Truth be told, I did like this film, as big-budgeted and as calculating (towards Academy voters) as it might have been. The performances all around are fantastic, with the exception of Brad Pitt, who's decent, but doesn't have much to sink his teeth into. The biggest problem with this film is that a much lower-budget Canadian film called 'The Boys of St. Vincent' was released the previous year or so, and it's vastly superior, not to mention truly controversial. Because there's some question as to how much of 'Sleepers' is based on truth, the film suffers; the actors seem as though they'd be more convincing if THEY themselves were convinced of the veracity of the script. But it's quite enjoyable to watch, and more than worth a rainy-day rental. Kevin Bacon especially should have at least received a supporting cast oscar, as a truly slimy prison guard.
Rating:
Summary: Great movie!
Review: I thought this was a good movie but it had a poor DVD! I brought it on DVD hoping it had extra features but it only has the theatrical trailer. I also hate the way that it is double-sided where you have to switch it to the other side. I thought it was a full-screen and widescreen deal but it was just one of those DVD's that you had to get up and switch it to the other side. I hope someday they will release a Special Edition of Sleepers on DVD so that they won't do this dumb double-sided thing. If your planning to buy this movie on DVD don't stick with the video or wait till it comes on TV!
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