Adam Cooper’s directorial debut Sleeping Dogs tries to reckon with jealousy, power, perception, and memory but never reaches the heights of genre classics like Se7en or Memento, which are clear inspirations.
Crowe plays Roy Freeman, an almost aggressively broken man whose recent brain surgery scars dice his scalp, his home littered with masking tape with notes to himself.
It is partially a sobering drama about a broken man suffering a debilitating illness and partially a gritty crime thriller, but never enough of either to satisfy fully. The Alzheimer’s diagnosis that bookends the film is under treatment effectively enough that Freeman is able to solve enough of the mystery for the plot to move forward. Despite this, whilst the final reveal hits more with a whimper than a bang, the story has spent so long focusing elsewhere that it never built the alternatives.
The story takes an extended detour into a flashback based on a manuscript that tells a compelling story of the corrupting power of influence, but it struggles to translate it back into the main plot, making it no more impactful on the plot than Freeman’s diagnosis.
Where this film does shine is in tone. The almost drained composition of shots when Freeman is our focal point is starkly contrasted to the vivid manuscript flashback, as author Richard Finn reckons with his perception of the murder and his relationships with Laura Gaines (Karen Gillan), a flighty yet brilliant researcher, and Joseph Wieder (Marton Csokas), a murder victim and manipulative psychologist.
These sections are awash with colour and vibrancy, a comment as to how each of our unreliable narrators is coming to the story and how they are analysing events with their own limited knowledge. Unfortunately, this sequence is front-loaded, and we lose this contrast from that point.
There is enough to satisfy a genre fan, but viewers may be baffled by the leaps it takes to justify a conclusion that didn’t reach the heights it was aiming for.
Sleeping Dogs is now playing in cinemas starting August 1st. Catch it at a cinema near you!
This review also appears on It’s On The House. Check out more reviews at Whats The Show to see what else is on in your town.
