SLEEPERS. Directed and written by Barry Levinson; produced by Barry Levinson and Steve Golin for Warner Bros. Starring Jason Patric, Brad Pitt, Robert de Niro, and Joe Perrino. Rated R (violence, sadism, language, sexual references).
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With a cast like this, no one could call Sleepers a sleeper. The actors above are only the ones with the most screen time, but they're joined by such names/performers as Kevin Bacon, Dustin Hoffman and Vittorio Gassmann.
(A "sleeper," incidentally, is apparently a kid who's been in reform school as well as a surprise hit movie.)
It's a true ensemble piece, with the biggest names (Hoffman, especially) taking on much smaller parts than we're used to seeing them in. But they all fit together remarkably well to tell this engrossing but disturbing story.
About the first third of the movie is set in the late sixties and follows a group of four friends growing up in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York. The acting by the four boys (Perrino, Brad Renfro, Geoff Wigdor and Jonathan Tucker) is outstanding and the life of those times is reconstructed lovingly, with an artist's attention to the telling details.
A prank which ends up wrong sends the quartet to reform school for a year, an experience that will shape the rest of their lives, and not in pleasant ways. They are cruelly brutalized by guards at the school (led by Bacon) and since we've come to know and like them so much, it seems almost as horrible for us to watch as for them to experience.
Fast forward to 1981, when two of the boys as adults (played by Ron Eldard and Bill Crudup) run into one of their tormentors. Being hardened killers by now, they don't waste much time in (graphically) blowing him away. That brings up the problem of arrest and a murder trial, which takes up the rest of the picture, but not in the way you might expect.
The cast is almost completely wonderful, but the weak link is at the center, unfortunately, in Patric, who is the movie's narrator and central character. He's just not in the same league as his co-stars. They are so good, though, that you can almost just ignore his shortcomings. De Niro, in particular, is as good as he's ever been as a concerned priest. And that's pretty good.
There's a deeper problem, though, that is harder to ignore. Although, when the story is this riveting, and the acting this terrific, it really shouldn't bother us TOO much that the moral universe of the movie is a bit surreal.
What I mean is that here we have another story where the mob is a benevolent organization (that is, they only kill people who deserve to die), the judicial system is completely ineffectual, and law enforcement is casually corrupt at best, and evil to the core at worst. It doesn't spoil the story, but it does make you a little less comfortable enjoying it.
November 6, 1996