Rent Sleeping Dogs (2024)

Despite an excellent cast, this rote cop thriller has few surprises & wastes an intriguing premise - Sleeping Dogs review by Timmy B

We are now firmly into Russell Crowe's new image & evolution as an actor. After an early career of mainly playing tough, handsome & impossibly-chiseled protagonists, culminating in Gladiator (the image of him holding a sword whilst screaming at the people in the amphitheatre will forever be iconic,) he has now changed into booking as many supporting roles as lead ones. Image-wise, gone is the gym-toned body, replaced with a more heavyset, everyday figure, again used to great advantage (as much as Unhinged is a fairly average B-movie, Crowe as it's unstoppable obese antagonist is genuinely unsettling.)

But it also has to be said that a lot of his filmography recently has not been great, and sadly this continues with Sleeping Dogs, which is a shame because sometimes when an incredible actor is cast in what would normally be a clichéd film, they can really elevate it.

Roy Freeman is a retired cop who is suffering from Alzheimer's disease. He is a part of a revolutionary new treatment where electrodes have been inserted into his brain, improving & bringing back his memory. He is contacted out of the blue by a woman from a death-row crisis legal charity, to ask for help in saving a man convicted of a brutal murder who Freeman helped to convict. He links up with his old partner & starts to piece the crime back together.

As someone who has seen the degradation of a family member with Alzheimer's, the early scenes are profoundly moving & obviously meticulously researched. Freeman's house is full of notes to himself, going from how to cook pizzas to what his name is. Mercifully, unlike in A Beautiful Mind, where Crowe's acting looked like a painful impression of Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, here the performance is more nuanced & careful. We also spend a good 20 minutes slowly getting to know Roy, mirroring his discovery of a new day.

However, this performance, alongside other great actors like Marton Csokas & Karen Gillan, is dragged down by a script/story which is just painfully dull and almost always boring. When a storyline involving a murder mystery isn't done well, you are always teetering on the edge of soapy, schlocky territory. However, Sleeping Dogs doesn't just teeter, it falls headlong into it. The acting becomes more & more hammy, the scenarios less believable & interesting.

There is the customary rug-pull/bait & switch, but this again just feels like clutching at straws and desperation. The only thing which sets this apart from many other soapy TV dramas is the higher level of violence, as well as a scene of autoerotic asphyxiation, earning it an 18 rating.