SLEUTH
SLEUTH |
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A young man arrives at a country home. He's having an affair with the wife of its owner, and plans to marry her. | score 3 |
moviereview rates films from 1 (unwatchable) to 5 (unmissable) |
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| Cast Michael Caine, Jude Law Director Kenneth Branagh Screenwriter Harold Pinter Country UK Rating / Running Time M / 87 minutes Australian Release March 2008 Official Site (c) moviereview
2006-2008
ABN 72 775 390 361 |
Joseph L. Mankiewicz tore into British snobbery with his searing class-drama. Set in a country manor, Sleuth
let loose two vicious men whose sense of propriety was, at the very
least, limited. Andrew Wyke (Laurence Olivier) was landed gentry; Milo
Tindle (Michael Caine) was the immigrant upstart who’d stolen his
wife. A battle of wills ensues in which revenge would be served cold
and bitter. Thirty years later, Michael Caine returns in this update by Kenneth Branagh. Jude Law, as he did in Alfie, assumes Caine’s role. I say update for this bears little resemblance to the Sleuth of old. Soft furnishings have been replaced by cold, steely interiors. Wyke is now a successful author. Language that was once elegant is decidedly pithy, when it’s not brutally ugly. Harold Pinter rewrote Anthony Shaffer’s original screenplay and his Sleuth is nothing if not trademark Pinter. Sharp, twisting, circular prose is funny, erudite, mean. He has distilled the 138 minute feature into a succinct 87 minutes of malice. Therein the film’s strength and weakness. Sleuth has polarised audiences everywhere. Received as either Branagh’s bastard child or a wondrous delight for those who revel in the art of language, it will set dinner tables alight. Both are correct. As a remake, it fails miserably. It’s a conceited affair for luvvie-lovers who wallow in the campery of protagonists as they run from perplexing to ridiculous. As a reworking, those failings are its strengths. Pinter and Branagh delight in the verbal jousting that starts with penis comparison and size, as we discover, matters. Size oscillates too, as each man gets one up on his adversary over their arguable love for Wyke’s wife. So who’s screwing who, or are they screwing each other? There’s the question, the pleasure and the pain. // COLIN FRASER |