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SLEUTH

 ABOUT THE MOVIE

Genre: Drama
Starring: Michael Caine, Jude Law
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Rating: NC-16 (Sexual Scenes)
Year Made: 2007

 

 


 SPECIAL FEATURES

- NIL

 


 TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Languages: English
Subtitles: English/Chinese
Aspect Ratio: 16x9 Widescreen
Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0
Running Time: 1 hr 26 mins
Region Code: PAL 3
Distributor: Origin Entertainment
Official Website:
http://www.sonyclassics.com/sleuth/

 

 

SYNOPSIS:   

A millionaire detective novelist matches wits with the unemployed actor who ran off with his wife in a deadly serious, seriously twisted game with dangerous consequences..

MOVIE REVIEW

For someone who enjoys detective tales, the premise of Sleuth looked promising and enticing. Two rather well known actors (Jude Law and Michael Caine) with established records of pulling off engaging performances, come together for a little cloak and dagger story sounded just too juicy to miss. Fellow reviewer reported that it was even better than the original as it compressed away the unnecessary bits to make this tale and our MX reviewer gave Sleuth a 4 stars rating during it’s theatrical run. Such recommendations fuel the interest to check Sleuth out but after viewing it on DVD, one word could be used to describe the disappointment with Sleuth.

And that’s "loopholes".

It’s getting rather spoilish from here (at least for the first portion anyway) so avoid if you do not want to be spoiled about this movie.

After a couple stinging verbal exchange between the young adulterer and the old cuckold, Andrew Wyke (Michael Caine) tempted Milo Tindle (Jude Law) to steal an expensive jewelry from him, promising that his plans are foolproof and rather easy money for him to earn. Money which the young adulterer could use to keep his new mistress happy in her accustoms way of life.

It’s really a tough sell to convince the audience that someone with the reasonable intellect would believe the words of someone that had been so hurt. No matter how convincing Michael Caine’s performance was or how the script tried to throw in a few plausible causes to the author’s plan, it just a tough sell.

Even the plan sound like it’s plausible, there are just a couple of suspicious sore thumbs that weren’t really iron out. What about the security cameras if Wyke was to actually carried out what he had intended? Won’t it reveal all the crime details, including Wyke’s involvement? Wyke’s reasoning for not performing the deed himself was that he could not be around when the theft was committed but why is he still around, providing Tindle with all the instructions to steal the jewelry while not going to somewhere public so that he could have some sort of alibi?

The third and biggest loophole of the first Act (You should really skipped this part if you don’t want to be spoiled for the second Act) would be how does a firing a blank send one human hurling across the room? The objective of such impossible act was to allow the mechanism of the second act to work but if you take a moment and think about it, it really took the magic out of this whole gambit between these two characters.

There are few more loopholes in the following second and third Act of this movie but it’s obvious that this movie is so bent on telling it’s tale of revenge between these two men that forgotten the certain logical aspect of how things operate and human’s behavior / thinking. Or maybe Tindle is such a foolish man but then again, it’s really hard to engage with such foolish act on one person when it supposed to be one up showmanship between two men.

With so many loopholes in this movie, the only enjoyable bits of this movie were to watch these two actors dishing out their verbal sparring and how the dynamic of power shift between them. This whole premise had it’s potential but sadly the loopholes were just too jarring to allow me to be utterly absorbed by the change of events.

SPECIAL FEATURES :

NIL.


AUDIO/VISUAL:

This film is presented in 16 x 9 widescreen. It comes with English Dolby Digital 2.0 and with English & Chinese subtitles.

MOVIE RATING:



DVD RATING :

NIL

Review by Richard Lim Jr

 
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This review is made possible with the kind support from Origin Entertainment

 



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