Sleepers

• Cat.no: 047 802 2
• Cert: 18
• Running time: 141 minutes
• Year: 1996
• Pressing: 1999
• Region(s): 2 (UK PAL)
• Chapters: 23 plus extras
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
• Languages: English, German
• Subtitles: English, German
• Widescreen: 16:9 (Super 35); Fullscreen: 4:3
• 16:9-enhanced: Yes
• Macrovision: Yes
• Disc Format: DVD 10
• Price: £17.99
• Extras : Scene index, Booklet

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Director:

Barry Levinson

(Avalon, Bugsy, Diner, Disclosure, Good Morning Vietnam, The Natural, Rainman, Sphere, Tin Men, Toys, Young Sherlock Holmes)

Producer:

Screenplay:

(based on the book by Lorenzo Carcaterra)

Music:

Cast:

Nokes: Kevin Bacon (Apollo 13, Criminal Law, Diner, A Few Good Men, Footloose, JFK, Murder in the First, National Lampoon’s Animal House, The River Wild)
Shakes: Jason Patric (Incognito, Geronimo, The Lost Boys, Rush, Speed 2)
Michael: Brad Pitt (Cool World, Johnny Suede, Kalifornia, Meet Joe Black, A River Runs Through It, Seven, Seven Years In Tibet, Thelma and Louise, True Romance, Twelve Monkeys)
Father Bobby: Robert De Niro (Awakenings, Backdraft, Cape Fear, Copland, The Deer Hunter, Godfather Part 2, Heat, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Ronin, Taxi Driver)
Danny Snyder: Dustin Hoffman (Accidental Hero, American Buffalo, Billy Bathgate, Dick Tracy, The Graduate, Hook, Little Big Man, Mad City, Marathon Man, Midnight Cowboy, Outbreak, Rainman, Sphere, Tootsie)
John: Ron Eldard (The Last Supper, TV: “ER”)
Carol: Minnie Driver (Big Night, Circle Of Friends, Good Will Hunting, Grosse Pointe Blank, Hard Rain, TV: “The Politician’s Wife”)
Shakes’ father: Bruno Kirby (The Basketball Diaries, Between The Lines, City Slickers, Donnie Brasco, When Harry Met Sally)
Tommy: Billy Crudup (Inventing The Abbots)
Ralph Ferguson: Terry Kinney (Body Snatchers, Fly Away Home, The Good Old Boys, TV: “Oz”)

Sleeperstells the story of four boys, Tommy, John, Shakes and Michael, enjoying the hotsummer of 1966 in Hell’s Kitchen, a place of innocence ruled by corruption.If you played by the rules, you got along fine. If you stepped out of line,you’d live to regret it. The neighbourhood was guided by both priests andgangsters and crimes against it were not permitted and when they did occur,punishment was severe.

These four brought about enough trouble on the day they stole a hotdog stand andattempted to teeter it on the edge of a staircase, teasing the owner. An errorof judgement later and it was sent crashing down into the path of an old man,nearly killing him. They were sentenced to a correctional facility, the WilkinsonHome For Boys, during which time they suffered at the hands of sadstic prisonwarden Kevin Bacon, making one of the boys strip naked for his viewing pleasure,forcing all of them to eat their dinner off the floor, plus some sickening,extreme examples of child abuse.

When the fall of 1981 comes, John and Tommy find Nokes and exact their revenge,resulting in a court case with Michael acting for them now he is a lawyer. Therest of the film also follows the progress of others from the facility who taketheir revenge for the hand that fate dealt them.

The picture quality has some noticeable artifacts on view which loses a pointfor the disc, while it loses another for presenting the film in the wrongaspect ratio. It was shot using the Super-35 format which allows an easiertransition to a 4:3 frame losing a lot less picture than a standard 2.35:1image, but although a correct widescreen version exists on video in the UK,this DVD comes with a 4:3 fullscreen version and one in 16:9 (1.77:1),the latter looking like a combination of open-matte and pan-and-scan.Watching the film, the 16:9 framing looks comfortable but what would promptanyone to make such a judgement when a perfect 2.35:1 master exists?

The average bitrate is a below-average 4.22Mb/s, peaking at just over 7Mb/s onoccasion, but at least there’s a saving grace in the widescreen versionbeing 16:9-enhanced for widescreen televisions.

The sound on the disc is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 for both English andGerman dialogue. If you haven’t got a DD5.1 setup, the sound is downmixedto Dolby ProLogic. It comes across without a hitch, but there’s nothing inparticular to get your speakers excited.

As stated earlier, the disc contains English and German dialogue in DolbyDigital 5.1 plus subtitles for the same.

Menu :

The menu is static but functional with little to select but at least there areno problems in doing so. You can’t skip past the copyright info unless you havepreviously bookmarked a scene, upon selecting which will access thatimmediately.

In a sense this film reminds me of Full Metal Jacket, not in terms ofcontent, but in the sense that it’s a film split into two halves, the latternot being as good as the first but you have to watch it to discover the endfate of the characters you’ve spent some time learning to care about.

The film boasts some heavyweight names in the form of Hoffman, De Niro plusBacon, Patric and Pitt, but the whole is less than the sum of its parts andlooking at the available video film formats in this country, I’d plump forthe widescreen video as it is available in the correct theatrical ratio.FILM : ***PICTURE QUALITY : ***SOUND QUALITY: ****EXTRAS: *——————————-OVERALL: ***

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1999.