Sleuth
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Rated: R
Cast: Michael Caine, Jude Law
Director: Kenneth Branagh
WorkNameSort: Sleuth
Our Rating: 0.50
During a recent screening of the remake of Sleuth, numerous viewers were left laughing at more than one scene. Ultimately, this writer realized they, like him, were laughing not at the movie’s attempts at humor, but at the preposterously bad example of movie-making they were enduring. Ostensibly about famous crime novelist Andrew Wyke (Michael Caine) matching wits with hairdresser/actor Milo Tindle (Jude Law, in the role Caine played in the ’72 version) – the man who is shagging Wyke’s wife – this two-person thriller set entirely in Wyke’s modern house succeeds only as another example of why Law should never star in a remake of a Caine movie again. (Remember Alfie?) Watching two men swing their cocks around to see whose is biggest might have been engaging as a character study in douchebaggery in the stage play this film is based upon, but it makes a woefully agonizing movie with only remarkable set design and cinematography, and some occasionally interesting direction by Kenneth Branagh, to recommend it.
This article appears in Nov 7-13, 2007.