Sleuth

Turns out the movie Sleuth is a remake! The older version came out a whole twenty five years before the remake, which means a third version of this movie should be out in about 2016.

That is a remakes come faster nowadays, joke.

Remakes also feature more knives.

This movie doesn’t have many people in it. Basically just the two leads. One, an older writer (Michael Caine), rich above all imagination, who finds out his wife is cheating on him. The latter, a young actor (Jude Law) who hasn’t made it big yet, who is currently sleeping with said wife, and planning on running away with her.

Here is an awesome tidbit. In the original tidbit, Michael Caine played the young actor character, wanting to run away with the wife. I fucking love stuff like that.

Either way, the movie begins with Caine inviting Law to his mansion. They get to talking. Skirting around the issue, until he drops the bomb. Yes, he knows about the affair. And he is fine with it. Wow, really? In fact, he’d rather the marriage was gone all together, but divorce means losing wealth and other assets. He’d rather she just ran away with the lover to Europe and never bother them again.

Caine warns Law that the wife expects a certain level of luxury that he won’t be able to provide. So he suggests that he steal from them, with his own help. A necklace, valued at around $1 million, he will break into and take with him to Europe. He will sell them to a guy Caine has set up for $800,000 and Caine will collect the insurance. Win win for everyone. But Law doesn’t just want that, he wants to get married to her, and a divorce would be necessary.

Also, and more obviously, what if this is all a trap for him, to get him put in jail by a husband mad at his wife’s infidelity. This “game” is set in motion, and it becomes a battle of wits between the two individuals, each not playing their whole hand, trying to come up on top, and potentially someone dying by the end.

Ah, look at Michael Caine. Young as a toddler.

It should be noted that a lot of this movie is dialogue. A lot. I mean, just two people and a plot. And then some escalation and other plots. You better pay attention, because they are both well spoken individuals and it might be easy to miss out.

I split this movie up into three acts in my head, roughly each a half hour. The first half hour, I was super interested, and was curious where it was going. The second half hour confused me, because what was going on felt quite obvious, and thus uninteresting at all to the story for me. I don’t need to see 30 minutes of a character obviously lying to another, knowing the surprise at the end wont be a surprise.

The third act is just all sorts of what in the fucks. It didn’t really make any sense to me. I can’t say I was surprised, just because of how confusing the whole situation was. The last two thirds of the movie felt like shit to me, and I honestly didn’t understand why it was all happening. I am afraid of ever seeing the original, because I really don’t want to have to ever listen to dialogue like that, for that long again. Even if the first is universally loved.