Sleepless

Something tells me that the Las Vegas Tourism Board is not going to be very happy when they get to see Sleepless.  It paints the city to be full of crooked cops, drug dealers, and where shoot outs happen out in the open on a regular basis.  General audiences watching it are likely to be slightly less enraged.  It's a perfectly standard police thriller that isn't very original, but at least it doesn't overstay its welcome and moves along quickly.  It's the kind of movie you can kill an afternoon with, but not much more than that.

The film is a remake of the 2011 French/Belgian thriller Sleepless Night (Nuit Blanche), which has gone unseen by me.  Jamie Foxx is Vincent Downs, an undercover cop with a deep, gravelly voice.  He and his partner (the rapper T.J.) kill a pair of crooks for their drugs in the film's opening scene, and quickly found out they ripped off the wrong drug dealer.  Vincent is now carrying 25 kilos of cocaine that is supposed to be delivered to Stanley Rubino (Dermot Mulroney), the slimy owner of a Las Vegas casino.  Stanley wants his drugs back, and in retaliation, he kidnaps Vincent's 16-year-old son Thomas (Octavius J. Johnson).  Stanley's goons nab the kid right out of Vincent's car when he's taking Thomas to a high school basketball game, so for the rest of the film, he has to lie to his ex-wife (Gabrielle Union) whenever she calls and assure him that everything is okay.  I could imagine this leading to some potentially comical moments, but this movie plays it mostly serious.

So, Vincent is in big trouble.  He has a lot of drug dealers and crooked cops who want him dead, his ex-wife is getting suspicious, his kid's stuck in a closet somewhere, he's bleeding from a stab wound, and he's running with stolen drugs.  All this, and an agent from Internal Affairs (Michelle Monaghan) suspects that Vincent is a dirty cop, and doesn't believe him when he tries to tell her he's been working undercover for the past two years to try to bust this Vegas drug ring.  It all leads up to a lot of running around, shootings, and dialogue that reads like the last hundred or so cop thrillers you've probably seen.  It's all perfectly watchable, and the movie does have a sleek look, but with talent like Foxx, Mulroney and Monaghan involved, you expect better.  Sure, the early January release date hints otherwise, but you hold out hope. 

Sleepless is one of those movies that is not bad in any real way, but it also refuses to stand out or take any chances.  It goes in one ear and out the other, and while you may feel entertained by certain moments (there are a few tense action sequences here), you constantly wish that the movie would just step up and do better.  It does have some fun with its own concept, and how it's hard to know who you're supposed to trust in the narrative.  In a way, the movie is putting us the audience into the shoes of Vincent, and so as he runs about trying to figure this all out, we find ourselves right along with him.  A truly talented director and screenplay could have really made something out of all this, and for all I know, the original 2011 movie did.  But what we get here is the kind of movie you won't hate, but also won't remember a couple months from now.

There are also some moments throughout the film that are downright stupid, and exist only because there wouldn't be a movie if they didn't happen.  At one point, Vincent is disguised as a hotel janitor, and when he comes face to face with the Internal Affairs agent chasing him, he keeps his head down, so she won't recognize him.  She sees him get on the elevator, and as the doors are closing and she's standing right in front of him, he looks up to show his face to her just as the door is closing.  Why would he do this?  So she can chase him to the floor he's going up to, of course.  And there's also a moment where Stanley decides to beat on Vincent's kid, smashing his hand with a fire extinguisher out of anger.  Then he leaves the room, and supposedly forgot to close and lock the door, leaving it hanging open and allowing the kid to be able to make his escape.  I understand that' ti's a movie and we're just supposed to go with moments like this, but sometimes you just have to wonder.

Sleepless seems to be trying to mix the over the top action of the Jason Bourne and Taken films, with the gritty realism of your average cop thriller.  But instead of flowing together, the pieces of this movie feel cobbled together.  This is a movie that is certainly never boring, but you feel like you've seen it all done before and done better.  Chance are very good that you have.

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