Sleepers movie review & film summary (1996)

The film tells the story of four friends from the west side of New York--Hell's Kitchen--and how they grow up in a tough but protective neighborhood, where the moral poles are Father Bobby (Robert De Niro) and King Benny (Vittorio Gassman), the Mafia boss. When the kids are 13, they steal a hot dog wagon and it rolls down subway steps and crushes a man. They're sentenced to a reformatory where they are tortured and sexually assaulted by a sadistic guard named Nokes (Kevin Bacon).

Now I will have to reveal plot points. There is a flash-forward to the summer of 1981. Two of the boys, now about 28 and gangsters themselves, walk into a restaurant, see Nokes, and shoot him to death. They are brought to trial. But one of the original four, Shakes (Jason Patric) now works for a newspaper. Another, Michael (Brad Pitt), is an assistant D.A. They fashion a scheme in which Michael will try the case in such a way that their two old friends will beat the rap.

“Words like `payback time' and `revenge' came to mind,” Shakes, the narrator, tells us. King Benny, still running the neighborhood, arranges for an alcoholic lawyer named Snyder (Dustin Hoffman) to defend the killers because he can be ordered to follow the script. Everything depends on the willingness of good Father Bobby to provide the defendants with an alibi.

On the surface, this is a story about justified revenge. Dig a little deeper and it gets complicated. The two defendants have become professional mobsters and killers. After their trial, they go back to killing. The priest observes, “I know what they were and I know what they are and it's not about that.” The movie's real subject is a homophobic revenge fantasy, which it justifies with the Cosa Nostra version of honor.

Consider the priest. Nothing in the film indicates he is anything other than absolutely truthful, upright and moral. When he's asked to perjure himself, there is an effective shot: The camera remains on De Niro in closeup, while he thinks, and thinks. The next time we see him is on the witness stand. In a movie flowing with dialogue, he is not given a single word to explain his decision, possibly because the filmmakers know it cannot be explained--anything he says would expose the shallow morality.