Sleepless Won’t Make You Fall Asleep, But…
Sleepless follows a pretty straightfoward story, as, Vincent Downs, an Undercover Cop (Jamie Foxx) and his corrupt partner (T.I.) steal drugs from an entrepreneur, Stanley Rubino(Dermot Mulroney). However, Rubino knows who Downs is and kidnaps his son (Octavius J. Johnson) as leverage for him to bring the cocaïne back to him, so he can sell it to known mob boss, Rob Novak (Scoot McNairy). At the same time, Detective Jennifer Bryant (Michelle Monaghan) believes Downs is corrupt and tracks him down at the Casino, with her partner (David Harbour).
The film mostly takes place inside the Luxus Casino, and Vincent Downs keeps making dumb decisions after dumb decisions — which falters the movie. At first, you believe he’s a corrupt cop, as he tries to take evidence and control a case, but he’s actually been undercover, working a case for two years, which completely baffles me. When Rubino kidnaps his son, the right thing to do would be to just give the cocaïne and be over and done with it. But that’s not what he does, otherwise there’d be no movie! Screenwriter Andrea Berloff doesn’t write her screenplay based on logic, but on complete and utter dumbassery. He hides several pounds of cocaïne in the ventilation shaft, on top of a toilet just so he can get his son back. Why? I have no idea why Downs is this dumb. And of course, Bryant takes the cocaïne and believes Downs is corrupt, which creates the biggest clusterfuck there could possibly be. He also doesn’t tell his ex-wife (Gabrielle Union) about the fact that Thomas was kidnapped, and decides to pretend that everything is fine — until she decides to see for herself and end up at the garage during the film’s climax — thank god she had a gun in her glove compartment, right?!?! The conservatives’ argument to “the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” comes to fruition as Dena (Union) brutally kills someone in cold blood with a gun to protect her family. Patriotism!
Now I’ll be the first to admit that I kinda enjoyed the clusterfuck at the Luxus Casino — it was completely nonsensical, but it kept me engaged most of the time. When Bryant and others try to track down Vincent Downs who’s nowhere to be found, until he’s right in front of them [but then disappears again in the blink of an eye], it was pretty fun. The most entertaining sequence of the movie comes in the form of a car chase sequence, inside the casino. The car wrecks everything in its path, inside the Casino, until it arrives in the garage for a superbly kinetic sequence — the best action sequence of the entire movie [including the thrilling shootout in the garage], because most of the action sequences are cut and edited to the absolute nether regions of action movies directed by Olivier Megaton that you can’t comprehend what’s going on. What’s terrible about that practice is that the movie ends up being Rated R — which could’ve EASILY benefited for gritty and extremely violent action sequences, but alas. Thank god the acting is excellent all-around — particularly Scoot McNairy who portrays a pretty menacing antagonist, and the most compelling character of the entire movie. As much as I liked David Harbour, his arc was too predictable to begin with. As soon as he tells Bryant to “Relax” and “Go home”, I knew right then and there that he was corrupt. And yes, he is the corrupt cop Bryant is looking for.
It takes a while before we get a truly exciting action sequence, and there are some cartoonishly dumb characters in Sleepless (Downs is the dumbest character of the entire movie, followed by the Cartoon Villain of Stanley Rubino), but it isn’t as bad as most critics make it out to be — it keeps its audience engaged by its shenanigans screenwriter Andrea Berloff and director Baran bo Odar make up. Downs makes up everything as he goes along, only to get his son, but it makes for great unintentional comedy. Once Scoot McNairy comes into play, he elevates the movie from Benny Hill slapstick to serious action kinetics, especially during the film’s terrific climax. We have great performances from a star-studded cast, even though Vincent Downs is a terribily written character and many sequences involving HIS character make zero common sense (and humane logic), and a barrage of terribly edited action sequences make Sleepless feel weightless, until you get completely lost in the film’s zaniness and enjoy the ride for what it is.
✯✯✯
