Sleepers Blu-ray delivers stunning video and great audio in this excellent Blu-ray release
After a prank goes disastrously wrong, a group of boys are sent to a detention center where they are brutalized; over 10 years later, they get their chance for revenge.
Sleepers is an adaptation of a memoir by Lorenzo Carcaterra that the author insists to this day is
true. However, all broadcast and video versions, including this Blu-ray, carry disclaimers before
the end credits by various New York governmental authorities disputing Carcaterra's account --
which isn't surprising, given how badly they're portrayed. Carcaterra acknowledged in his
prologue to the book Sleepers that he'd altered names, dates, places and personal details to
protect identities, but he insisted that "this is still my story and that of the only three friends in
my life who have truly mattered". The same words are spoken in voiceover by the character
"Shakes", who is Carcaterra's alter ego in the book and film.
Viewers and readers of Sleepers may feel that the story is too melodramatic to be believable, but
melodrama often gets an unfair rap. One of America's great directors, the late Sidney Lumet,
loved the genre, believed that it portrayed essential human truths and delighted in pointing out
that revered works of art are often melodramas (he cited Hamlet and Oedipus Rex, but many
of Lumet's classics could have been included). "In a well-written drama", Lumet once said, "the
story comes out of the characters, and in a well-written melodrama, the characters come out of
the story." In Sleepers, both the story and the characters come out of Hell's Kitchen in New York
City, whose peculiar character defines the four protagonists and sets them on their paths in life.
The story's tragic irony is that it's the outside world, the realm of law and order and fine,
upstanding social institutions, that brutalizes them and damages them for life.
With the aid of their old neighborhood, Shakes and his friends finally achieve some measure of
justice, but Carcaterra was too honest a writer, and writer-director Barry Levinson's adaptation
was too faithful, to let the their revenge be anything but a melancholy necessity. Maybe that's
why audience response to the film was weak when it was released in the fall of 1996; after almost
two and a half hours of heartache and intrigue, viewers wanted more uplift than Sleepers
provides. No doubt there was also some disappointment upon discovering that many of the film's
biggest names (among them, Brad Pitt and Dustin Hoffman) didn't appear until an hour into the
film, and then only as part of an ensemble. Still, it's a great ensemble. If you've only seen
Hoffman and Robert De Niro together in the Focker films, watch the courtroom exchange in
Sleepers where Hoffman's alchoholic lawyer questions De Niro's priest for an idea of what pros
like these can do with even a short scene where the subject really matters.
It's not worth throwing a life away just to get even.
- Fat Mancho
Sleepers is roughly divided into two parts, the first set from 1966 to 1968 and the second in 1981.
The leads are four boyhood friends:
Lorenzo "Shakes" Carcaterra, played by Joseph Perrino as a boy and Jason
Patric as an adult.
Michael Sullivan, played by Brad Renfro (who died in 2008 at age 25 from
a heroin overdose) as a boy and by Brad Pitt as an adult.
John Reilly, played by Geoffrey Wigdor as a boy and by Ron Eldard as an
adult.
Tommy Marcano, played by Jonathan Tucker as a boy and by Billy
Crudup (in his first film) as an adult.
As children and adults, they all know the same girl from the neighborhood: Carol Martinez,
played by Monica Polito as a child and by Minnie Driver as an adult.
Childhood in the Hell's Kitchen of the 1960s is an odd mixture of sheltered and worldly. It's an
insular, working class, racially diverse community where the Sixties pass unnoticed (except on
TV), domestic violence against women is a routine occurrence, and crime is not only tolerated
but respected -- just not against members of the community and especially not against children. In
the words of the adult Shakes, it was "a place of innocence ruled by corruption". Shakes,
Michael, John and Tommy are a happy-go-lucky gang, full of promise and possibility, but they're
pulled in opposite directions by two very different role models. One is Father Bobby (De Niro), a
local priest who grew up on the same streets and has no illusions about how his parishioners live
(one of his best friends is serving life for a triple murder). The other is King Benny (Vittorio
Gassman, who all but steals the film), the local godfather who rarely leaves his bar, because
everyone comes to him. After hearing stories from his father (Bruno Kirby) of King Benny's
exploits, Shakes asks him for a job. Before long, all four friends are running his errands.
Everything changes when the kids accidentally injure a bystander while ripping off a hot dog
vendor. They're arrested and sentenced to terms ranging from six to eighteen months at the
Wilkinson Home for Boys, where they're targeted by a group of guards led by Sean Nokes
(Kevin Bacon). For months, the boys are secretly beaten, tortured and raped. Nokes and his
cohorts -- Ferguson (Terry Kinney), Addison (Jeffrey Donovan) and Styler (Lennie Loften) --
threaten them with worse if they talk, and on one occasion, after losing a touch football game to
an inmate team, the guards beat a boy named Rizzo (Eugene Byrd) to death. Childhood ends for
these kids, and their friendship is replaced by something deeper and more painful: a shared vow
of silence and a determination to seek revenge if the chance ever arises.
The chance presents itself fourteen years later. One night, Tommy Marcano and John Reilly -- now grown men
and founders of the deadly West Side Boys gang -- spot Sean Nokes, now a
security guard, having dinner in McHale's pub. They walk up, identify themselves and calmly
riddle him with bullets in front of witnesses. Unperturbed, they're arrested and charged with
murder.
Michael Sullivan has become a lawyer working for the District Attorney's office and lobbies to
get the case, arguing that he has a "feel" for the neighborhood. Secretly, though, Michael has
devised a revenge plan worthy of Edmond Dantès in The Count of Monte Cristo, his favorite
book. Using intermediaries to communicate with Shakes, now a journalist, and Carol, now a
social worker, Michael enlists all of Hell's Kitchen, including King Benny and eventually Father
Bobby, in an elaborate plot to expose Nokes's past. The plan involves a rigged trial, manipulated
testimony, secret investigations of the three guards who worked with Nokes (all of whom have
moved on to other careers, some of them crooked), tips to the NYPD's internal affairs division,
the purchase of gambling markers, negotiations with an up-and-coming drug lord known as Little
Caesar (a young Wendell Pierce, currently on Treme), and the machinations of a substance-abusing defense attorney
named Snyder (Dustin Hoffman) who's seen better days, but rises to the
occasion when he finds himself in the unaccustomed position of speaking for a righteous cause.
The irony of Sleepers' 1981 section is that, for real justice to be done, all the institutions of "justice"
have to be subverted. True testimony has to be scared off or discredited; perjured testimony has to be
procured and then corroborated by phony documentation; and an entire trial has to be staged and
rigged so that two killers can be exonerated. But is the ultimate outcome in Sleepers really
justice? Is it even the "sweet revenge" that Michael Sullivan imagined when he cast himself as a
modern day Count of Monte Cristo? In the voiceover prologue at the beginning of the film,
Shakes says that he's the only one who can speak for his friends and for "the children we once
were". Throughout the 1981 portion of the film, images of those children recur, in edits,
dissolves and superimpositions, as if to remind us that those children are not only in the past, but
stand on the other side of a chasm torn across the paths of their lives by a cataclysm that nothing
can undo. In a kind of epilogue, Shakes recounts what became of each friend after the trial, then
turns back for one last look at their childhood selves, as if he were observing strangers. "The
future lay sparkling ahead", he says, "and we thought we would know each other forever." But how can you know each
other when you no longer recognize yourself?
Sleepers was released on a so-called "flipper" DVD in 1997, which means that it was split
between two sides of a double-sided disc, because back then the industry hadn't yet perfected
double-layer DVDs. This Blu-ray is the first reissue of the film in region 1; so it's hardly
surprising that the image is an upgrade in every respect. Cinematographer Michael Ballhaus
created several different styles for Sleepers. In the 1960s sequences, images tend to be more
brightly lit and the pallette is dominated by cheerier colors, with frequent pastels. As soon as the
film reaches Wilkinson, the pallette becomes muted, at times almost to the point of
monochromatic; some scenes are genuine black-and-white, as are flashbacks later in the film.
The 1981 portion of the film uses darker, richer tones, and not just because so many scenes occur
at night or in indoor locations with dark decor, whether it's a courtroom, King Benny's bar or
Little Caesar's office. The darkness of the 1981 sequences is thematic, with plots, secrets and
skulduggery all around.
The Blu-ray's 1080p, AVC-encoded image handles these carefully orchestrated color shifts
effectively and accurately. Detail is excellent, as is apparent in, e.g., the fine appearance of
clothing patterns and the elaborate period decor on the streets of Hell's Kitchen, as well as the
crowded furnishings in residences like Carol's apartment. Black levels are very good, which is
essential for scenes like the clandestine meeting between Shakes and Michael just after Michael
has gotten himself appointed to try the Nokes murder. They meet late at night and step in and out
of shadows, but you can always make out the details of their expressions.
I have read suggestions that DNR was applied to this transfer, but I did not observe any motion
artifacts, loss of fine detail or waxy complexions that are the trademarks of such digital filtering.
The Blu-ray is remarkably free from any visible grain, but Sleepers has always had a notably
smooth and grainless texture, despite the fact that it wasn't completed on a digital intermediate
(and notwithstanding the categorical declarations of those who declare that Super35 photography
is always, always grainy).
Though it is a dialogue-driven film, Sleepers includes a number of sequences where sounds other
than speech are used for effective storytelling, and the DTS lossless track reproduces these
forcefully. One example is a touch football game that becomes something more; the game is
intercut with scenes from its aftermath and acquires tremendous impact from the contrast between
the expansive roar of the players and onlookers in all five speakers with the quiet scenes featuring
a single individual afterward. Scenes in subways, especially a meeting between Carol and
Michael, use the entire soundfield, including the subwoofer, to convey the New York MTA's full
sonic assault. A particularly interesting use of sound occurs late in the film, when gunfire is
shown but not heard, because it's being drowned out by a plane taking off, the sound of which is
conveyed at full volume through the entire system. In short, even though Sleepers may not
become your latest "demo" disc, you won't regret having your system well-balanced and
adjusted.
Even if there were nothing else, the soundtrack of Sleepers would merit the best playback system
possible for John Williams' excellent score, which is notable because it demonstrates the great
composer's range. Meditative, worldly, almost (but not quite) mournful, Williams hits exactly
the right bittersweet note for this tale oddly balanced between triumph and tragedy. It was the
film's only Oscar nomination and well-deserved.
Theatrical Trailer (SD; 1.33:1; 2:16). It's an effective trailer, but it does
reinforce the impression that the parts played by the film's "name" stars are much bigger than they really are.
It was disappointing at the time, and it remains disappointing fifteen years later, that Warner has
made no effort to assemble any comments, thoughts or recollections from the creative talent that
made Sleepers. Even if the actors and director were unavailable, it would have been interesting to
hear from the production designer, cinematographer and effects people about recreating the look
of vintage Hell's Kitchen streets after the passage of thirty years (and a lot of gentrification). It's
hard to believe that Carcaterra would have been unwilling to provide a commentary track, given
his role as co-producer and his personal investment in the story.
Still, the film itself is what counts, and the Blu-ray edition of Sleepers provides excellent audio
and an image that, while not eye-popping, is accurate and pleasing to the eye. And since the film
was never available on region 1 DVD in anything but a "flipper", this upgrade to Blu-ray is an
easy decision. Highly recommended.
Warner Home Video have revealed that they will release three more highly anticipated films on Blu-ray: Jon Amiel's Copycat (1995), starring Sigourney Weaver (Alien, Death and the Maiden), Holly Hunter (The Piano), and Dermot Mulroney (The Thing Called Love); Barry ...
