Sleepless ** (2017, Jamie Foxx, Michelle Monaghan, Dermot Mulroney, Scoot McNairy) – Movie Review

Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx sleep-walks through director Baran bo Odar’s mediocre, nastily violent action thriller, based on Frédéric Jardin’s 2011 French original, Nuit blanche [Sleepless Night]. You can see what they were after, a take on a Liam Neeson-style Taken. But Taken (2008) has proved a hard act to follow.

Foxx plays Vincent Downs, an undercover cop investigating the criminal underworld in Las Vegas, where he scours Rubino (Dermot Mulroney)’s nightclub, desperately searching for his estranged 16-year-old son Thomas (Octavius J Johnson). The kid has been kidnapped to force Vincent to return a fortune in cocaine that he and his bent police partner Sean (Tip ‘T.I.’ Harris) have snatched from a psychotic powerful drug dealer.

The generic plot, dialogue and characters have hardly a shred of credibility, though the auto-piloted movie is mostly fast moving and action packed enough for that not to matter too much. It is quite slick in places, with a few good fights and car crashes, and sometimes looks good in Mihai Malaimare Jr’s noir-style cinematography. But it is Z grade material, artificially propelled with a horrible soundtrack by Michael Kamm, heading straight for the DVD counter.

Scoot McNairy gives the nearest to an interesting, characterful performance as the lip-smacking psycho Novak, who wants his drugs back – PDQ. It’s a fun kind of part for those who enjoy watching psychos torment and torture people, and McNairy plays it to the hilt.

There are a couple of female roles, both badly written, giving Michelle Monaghan and Gabrielle Union a hard time as tough Internal Affairs cop Bryant and Vincent’s whiny nurse wife Dena (though admittedly she has cause to whine, because her mostly absent hubby is responsible for getting their kid in mortal danger). To act the hard girl, Monaghan overplays her hand, while Union underplays, both quite boringly. 

[Spoiler alert] David Harbour draws another short straw as Bryant’s bent police partner Dennison. You know he’s going to be a bad guy because he looks shifty all the time, his eyebrows are too near his eyes and his eyes are glinty, and hey also, because everybody is bad in this movie, unless proved otherwise.

[Spoiler alert] Like the film, the title Sleepless only makes a vague sense, whereas the original title Sleepless Night actually makes sense. So not an improvement then. By the risible end, everybody is dead or in hospital, and there is a horrible idea they are setting up a sequel.

Baran bo Odar’s favourite movies are Blade Runner (1982) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

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