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SYNOPSIS:
A millionaire detective novelist matches wits with the unemployed
actor who ran off with his wife in a deadly serious, seriously
twisted game with dangerous consequences..
MOVIE
REVIEW
For
someone who enjoys detective tales, the premise of Sleuth
looked promising and enticing. Two rather well known actors
(Jude Law and Michael Caine) with established records of pulling
off engaging performances, come together for a little cloak
and dagger story sounded just too juicy to miss. Fellow reviewer
reported that it was even better than the original as it compressed
away the unnecessary bits to make this tale and our MX reviewer
gave Sleuth a 4 stars rating during it’s theatrical
run. Such recommendations fuel the interest to check Sleuth
out but after viewing it on DVD, one word could be used to
describe the disappointment with Sleuth.
And
that’s "loopholes".
It’s getting rather spoilish from here (at least
for the first portion anyway) so avoid if you do not want
to be spoiled about this movie.
After
a couple stinging verbal exchange between the young adulterer
and the old cuckold, Andrew Wyke (Michael Caine) tempted Milo
Tindle (Jude Law) to steal an expensive jewelry from him,
promising that his plans are foolproof and rather easy money
for him to earn. Money which the young adulterer could use
to keep his new mistress happy in her accustoms way of life.
It’s
really a tough sell to convince the audience that someone
with the reasonable intellect would believe the words of someone
that had been so hurt. No matter how convincing Michael Caine’s
performance was or how the script tried to throw in a few
plausible causes to the author’s plan, it just a tough
sell.
Even
the plan sound like it’s plausible, there are just a
couple of suspicious sore thumbs that weren’t really
iron out. What about the security cameras if Wyke was to actually
carried out what he had intended? Won’t it reveal all
the crime details, including Wyke’s involvement? Wyke’s
reasoning for not performing the deed himself was that he
could not be around when the theft was committed but why is
he still around, providing Tindle with all the instructions
to steal the jewelry while not going to somewhere public so
that he could have some sort of alibi?
The
third and biggest loophole of the first Act (You should
really skipped this part if you don’t want to be spoiled
for the second Act) would be how does a firing a blank
send one human hurling across the room? The objective of such
impossible act was to allow the mechanism of the second act
to work but if you take a moment and think about it, it really
took the magic out of this whole gambit between these two
characters.
There
are few more loopholes in the following second and third Act
of this movie but it’s obvious that this movie is so
bent on telling it’s tale of revenge between these two
men that forgotten the certain logical aspect of how things
operate and human’s behavior / thinking. Or maybe Tindle
is such a foolish man but then again, it’s really hard
to engage with such foolish act on one person when it supposed
to be one up showmanship between two men.
With
so many loopholes in this movie, the only enjoyable bits of
this movie were to watch these two actors dishing out their
verbal sparring and how the dynamic of power shift between
them. This whole premise had it’s potential but sadly
the loopholes were just too jarring to allow me to be utterly
absorbed by the change of events.
SPECIAL FEATURES :
NIL.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
This
film is presented in 16 x 9 widescreen. It comes with English
Dolby Digital 2.0 and with English & Chinese subtitles.
MOVIE
RATING:
 
DVD RATING :
NIL
Review
by Richard Lim Jr
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