Sleepless

Year: 2017
Genre: Action
Directed: Baran bo Odar
Stars: Jamie Foxx, Michelle Monaghan, T.I., Dermot Mulroney, David Harbour, Scoot McNairy, Octavius J. Johnson, Gabrielle Union
Production: Open Road Films

Watching Sleepless is much like eating the last chalupa of the night at a run-down Taco Bell. All the ingredients are there to give you a low-rent, but still pretty satisfying experience. Yet once you actually sit down and take your first big bite, you realize everything has coagulated into an undecipherable mess. And, as if you taunt you, they managed to sneak in some fresh lettuce.

You'll never be a real chalupa, but you'll do nonetheless.

The story begins with a ballsy, dark alley drug heist perpetrated by two dirty cops, Vincent Dowds (Foxx) and Sean Cass (T.I.). After a lengthy gunfight and escape, the two are assigned the next morning to their own crime scene, all but guaranteeing they're in the clear as far as the law is concerned. This doesn't sit well with Internal Affairs Agent Jennifer Bryant (Monaghan) whose recent brush with corruption has left her hyper-aware of citizens above suspicion. Dowds and Cass think they're in the clear. They think they can simply resell their score. Unfortunately, Las Vegas is a smaller town than they realize and the powers that be decide Dowd's son (Johnson) would be the perfect bargaining chip.

Nuit Blanche (2011)

The fresh lettuce in this case (if we decide to continue the belabored taco metaphor), is best represented by the script. Sleepless is based on the French film Nuit Blanche (2011), a movie marketed as a cross between Die Hard (1988) meets 24 (2001-2010) by way of Taken (2008). With that kind of framing, it's easy to see the influences. The mechanics of the script gifts its audience with escalating stakes, a clear time-clock, a largely singular location and an array of conflicting motivations and double-crosses.

Yet in the hands of relatively green German director Baran bo Odar and the positively sleepwalking Jamie Foxx, Sleepless can't help but buckle under the weight of the script's machinations. Instead of emphasizing human emotions to gain tension and momentum, the film clumsily succumbs to the lazy rhythms of American action cliches. This requires, among other things, an obligatory car chase, the main villain mindlessly intimating his underlings, and Jamie Foxx brawling and dodge bullets with superhuman aplomb while nursing a stab wound to the abdomen. The fact that no bad guys were dispatched from the rooftop of the Luxur Hotel and Casino is a minor miracle.

Or a huge oversight!

The results are not just second-rate, they're last-rate. Every angle of this film was shot not with maximum aesthetic appeal in mind, but to hide how embarrassingly cheap this film is. The lions share of the fight scenes take place not in the casino but in the back service corridors. The car chase I mentioned, takes place in a near empty parking garage and the climactic showstopper at the end of the movie might as well be lifted from a Troma movie.

weeeeee!

This movie either needed to be much better or much worse than it ended up being. Perhaps if they dumbed down the script further, the cheapness of the end product would have been endearing. Perhaps they could have made an unintentionally hilarious Steven Seagal vehicle. Yet with a script this patently in-love with itself, Sleepless needed to rise to the challenge and unfortunately it folded like a bad hand of poker. The European version may have been a smart, effective and thrilling mix of genre influences, but this American remake feels like Triple 9 (2016) meets Urban Justice (2007) by way of a pile of s**t.

Final Grade: F