Sleepless movie review & film summary (2017)

The film's major problem is its inability to settle on a tone and develop it throughout, or even from one scene to the next. It's dour but not grim or horrifying, and although there are enough Jason Bourne-style, heavily improvised fight scenes (including a couple of keepers staged, respectively, in a kitchen and a jacuzzi room) to distract from the knowing ludicrousness of the story, these action moments are executed in such a rote way (all fast cuts and swinging camerawork) that it's never possible to appreciate them on their own terms, much less find beauty or terror in them.

Foxx makes a fine action hero; he can do almost anything the movie requires of him, and his average guy demeanor here works up to a point. But it's still too easy to imagine another actor bringing something more to the role than Foxx can muster. A couple of decades ago, a somewhat edgier action star like Bruce Willis or Denzel Washington would've played the hell out of Vincent, infusing the movie with a nihilistic edge. The supporting cast boasts a couple of standout turns—McNairy and Harbour in particular, radiate 1940s tough-guy character actor vibes—but the entire cast is hampered by material that gives them just enough to construct playable characters but not enough to make them really sing. The movie also can't seem to make up its mind to be as realistic as possible (under the circumstances) or embrace the silliness and push it into the realm of the surreal. Some touches that might've been gloriously nutty in another film feel like mistakes here, such as the dispersal of tear gas in a key action scene filled by battling characters without gas masks: nobody seems to be affected by the chemicals, so it's as if the movie included it just to make the scene smoky and cool-looking.

"Sleepless" could've gone in many different directions, and a confident, focused director might have been able to turn the story into an action-packed neo-noir about cops and criminals on society's grimy fringes or perhaps a black comedy about men and women in way over their heads. There is something almost touchingly funny about Vincent's desperation: he's clearly a guy who's been gambling with his own life for quite a long time, and now finds himself trapped in a literal casino where the odds are against him; his anguish and shame are amplified by his knowledge that the house always wins.