Directed By: Barry Levinson
Notable Cast Members: Brad Pitt, Jason Patric, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Minnie Driver, Kevin Bacon, Billy Crudup, Ron Eldard, Bruno Kirby
Summary: Four young boys lat sixties Hell’s Kitchen are bored and looking for something fun to do. More so, they are looking for some trouble since swimming, tanning, and everything else has merely gotten dull. After choosing to get some free eats from a local hot dog vendor, they decide to take it a step further by stealing his entire cart. But their prank goes horribly wrong and they end up almost killing a man and being sent to juvenile prison. There the boys are exposed to horrible beatings, rapes, and sheer brutality. Once their stint in juvi is over, they vow never to speak of what happened again. But thirteen years later and a chance meeting gives them an opportunity for revenge and gives the strength of their friendship the biggest test imaginable.
Initial Thoughts: Back in high school, this wasn’t a film anyone would have expected my clique of friends to go see as it came out the same year as both Scream and Fear. Yet we ended up at the theatre and here we saw a film that I got a few laughs at from the slight humor thrown in here and there, especially from the Fat Man. Other then that, Sleepers presented to me a bunch of kids getting raped and just humiliated by a bunch of prickish security guards. All I could think about was how pissed I would be if that happened to me. How angry I would be if I was already suffering through jail time and then some low-class cops decided to have their way with me.
Then it moved on to thirteen years later and the boys have all moved on. Two of them became gang members, one a reporter, and the fourth a lawyer yet they never forgot. And when Tommy and John shot Nokes to death in that bar, it was just an awesome scene and I left the theatre happy. Happy because the film had started so crappy for the boys and ended so well for them. It was a good flick that kept me entertained for a good two hours.
Further Thoughts: It had probably been two years by the time I saw Sleepers again by flipping channels and catching it on. I hadn’t seen it in a long time and it seemed familiar so I left it on. Soon I began noticing how dark the first half of the film really was. These boys were little bad asses and some serious troublemakers, so they ended up getting what they deserved by being sent to juvi. But then there are the beatings and rapes and utter humiliation that was laid down upon them for over a year. They suffered more then any human should ever have to.
Furthermore, the pure and insipid evil that is displayed by Kevin Bacon makes his character so damn easy to hate but yet so frightening all at the same time. You can always tell that the other guards are a bit leery about going through with the abuse each night, but they end up doing it anyway. Bacon’s character Nokes dropping his pants and just saying what he wants from the boys is just solid sickness that he pulls off so damn well. And well into the future when Nokes is still a loser and having done nothing with his miserable life, Bacon continues to pull off the role of a pompous prick to perfection.
Illumination: The thing that finally got me to love this film was a line in the bar when Tommy and John go up to Nokes as he’s eating and get him to remember them. After he finally does and gets a few laughs about how he abused them and how scared they were, he asks what they want from him. John simply stares at him and calmly says:
“What I’ve always wanted. To watch you die.”
The bullets fly and Nokes is dead. That line just sent chills through my entire body and was just delivered in such a damn cool fashion that I can’t help but say it is my favorite moment in the entire film. But when watching Sleepers, one has to look at it as a four-act play instead of one film. The first act is the boys in Hell’s Kitchen living the good life and enjoying their teenage angst but ending in horrible tragedy. The second act is their time at the Wilkinson Home for Boys dealing with pure hell. The third act is about revenge and takes place thirteen years later and entirely in the bar where Tommy and John meet up with Nokes again. The fourth and final act deals with choices to be made and the full murder trial.
Sleepers is a film about youth, mistakes, brutality, revenge, murder, deception, and most of all friendship. Everything falls into place so beautifully and everything goes just as planned so perfectly that you can’t help but smile by the end of it even after all the horrific incidences you just witnessed. Through all that, Sleepers went from some flick I saw in the theatre to my all-time favorite film above all others and will be for many years to come.
