“This is a true story about friendship that runs deeper than blood. This is my story and that of the only three friends in my life who truly mattered.” — Lorenzo Carcaterra, “Sleepers”
Of all the innumerable Hollywood movies recently that have tackled the subject of revenge — examining it, glorifying it or simply exploiting it — one of the strangest and most troubling may be Barry Levinson’s “Sleepers.”
Based on Lorenzo Carcaterra’s 1995 bestseller, it’s the allegedly true tale of four boyhood friends and the vendetta that binds them together as adults. And though it’s a good movie from some angles — well written and directed, beautifully visualized, acted to a fine turn by a top cast that includes Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Brad Pitt and Kevin Bacon — it’s also disturbing in ways that go beyond simple questions of movie violence or morality.
“Sleepers” takes place in Hell’s Kitchen, that West Side New York breeding ground for crime, violence — and movies. And, during the course of its 2 1/2 hours, this opulent crime drama takes us through the years, and injustices, with a quartet of boys who grow up together, are imprisoned and savagely mistreated together, and who rejoin more than a decade later to mete out a dreadful revenge.
Young actors play the boys. They are Lorenzo or “Shakes” (Joe Perrino), Michael (Brad Renfro), Tommy (Jonathan Tucker) and John (Geoffrey Wigdor). When we first meet them, in 1966, they’re like a junior auxiliary of the “Goodfellas,” running wild and accompanied everywhere by a wall-to-wall ’60s rock score.
Writer-director Levinson is straying into Martin Scorsese territory here, telling the same kind of story with less edge and fire and a more obvious strain of liberal humanism — which is, at first, invigorating. Levinson’s best movies usually have been male-bonding tales such as “Diner” and “Tin Men” — and this may be his most confident direction since “Rain Man.” (Michael Ballhaus of “Goodfellas” shot “Sleepers,” which also shows heavy influence from Francis Coppola’s “Godfather” movies and Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time In America.”)
The kids of “Sleepers” are pulled between the worlds of the gangsters and the church: In this case, the benign buddyhood of Father Bobby (Robert De Niro), who tries to save their souls while creaming them on the basketball courts; and the suave cynicism of mafioso King Benny (Vittorio Gassmann), who knows whom to call to get someone killed.
Soon enough, the balance is tipped. A botched hot-dog wagon robbery by the four boys leads to a near-fatal accident, and they’re all sent to an upstate reformatory. There they are beaten, bullied and repeatedly raped by a horrible quartet of prison guards, led by the odious Nokes (Kevin Bacon) and joined by the wishy-washy Ferguson (Terry Kinney).
The first part of the movie shows innocence violently lost. In the second part, two of the boys — Tommy (played by Billy Crudup) and John (played by Ron Eldard) — have grown into stony-eyed killers and drug thugs. Michael is now a pensive, handsome young assistant district attorney (played by Brad Pitt). And Lorenzo (played by Jason Patric) is a newspaperman — and, supposedly, the future author of “Sleepers.”
Tommy and John stumble onto the now-decrepit Nokes in a bar and blow him away, before witnesses; Michael asks to prosecute the case. Then, with Lorenzo and another old neighborhood pal, Carol (Minnie Driver), Michael hatches a complex plan to assist their buddies while also exposing Nokes and his three guard cronies. The plan involves perjury, police tipoffs and an assassination performed by King Benny’s Harlem counterpart, whose brother was killed back in the ’60s by those same guards.
By now, coincidences have been stacking up like empty beer bottles. Heading up Tommy and John’s defense team is the alcoholic lawyer Danny Snyder (Hoffman). Father Bobby is recruited as an alibi witness — and asked to lie under oath to save the boys.
Did all this happen? Was there really a prison football game between guards and boy inmates that suspiciously recalls the 1973 movie “The Longest Yard?” Was an important case handed to a young assistant D.A. who was a boyhood chum of the defendants? If there is a real-life Father Bobby, how does he feel about being revealed to the world as a perjurer?
Yet, movies on historical subjects often transgress the facts. And, to tell the truth, it may matter little for the movie — which is far less plausible than life but far more plausible than many other movies.
The moral rationalizations behind this story are pat and unbelievable. So is the story itself.
But, tipping the balance in “Sleepers’ ” favor are the high-style “clean mean streets” look crafted by Ballhaus and production designer Kristi Zea, and the work of its deep and talented cast. De Niro and Hoffman give the movie the depth and authenticity its script often lacks. Pitt again holds the screen with his James Dean-style, wounded poetic intensity. Frank Medrano has a pungent supporting part as hood savant Fat Mancho. And, of the boys, Renfro and Perrino add pace and bite.
Working against the movie is the sheer unbelievability of the scheme itself. How can you believe it as fact when you can’t even accept it as fiction? One wonders why the New York D.A.’s office didn’t know more about Michael. (The film’s explanation: All juvenile records are destroyed.) And one wonders at the stance toward vengeance itself — which seems to have been derived from Lorenzo’s favorite book, “The Count of Monte Cristo.”
We don’t get much reality from major-studio movies and we probably shouldn’t expect it from “Sleepers.” What engages us about the movie, finally, is something different: the clever way it revives and revises old revenge-movie myths. But, as a story of a friendship running “deeper than blood” and of the only friends that matter, the movie is often thinner than vino.
(star) (star) (star)
Directed and written by Barry Levinson; based on the book by Lorenzo Carcaterra; photographed by Michael Ballhaus; edited by Stu Linder; production designed by Kristi Zea; music by John Williams; produced by Levinson, Steve Golin. A Warner Brothers release; opens Friday. Running time: 2:32. MPAA rating: R. Language, sensuality, violence.
THE CAST
Sean Nokes ………………………. Kevin Bacon
Father Bobby …………………….. Robert De Niro
Danny Snyder …………………….. Dustin Hoffman
Lorenzo, a k a Shakes……………… Jason Patric
Michael …………………………. Brad Pitt
Carol …………………………… Minnie Driver
