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SLEUTH Send This Review to a Friend
The 2007 Toronto International Film Festival showcased “Sleuth,” which aroused interest as a result of its history and the new casting. Remakes can sometimes turn out well, but there has to be a point to doing them. In the updated version of “Sleuth,” the original based on the play by Anthony Shaffer having been shown in 1972, the point seems to be Michael Caine playing the role Laurence Olivier had in the earlier version, against Caine in the other part. Caine is on record as saying he had hoped to play the Olivier role. Now he gets hs chance, but in a new script written by Harold Pinter with direction by Kenneth Branagh. Jude Law has the role Caine played.
This version is boiled down to a confrontation between Andrew Wyke (Caine), a rich writer of detective yarns and Milo Tindle (Law), an actor who has been having an affair with the writer’s wife. The film is a violent and psychological cat and mouse game of one-upmanship with the constant threat of it becoming deadly.
Despite the impressive acting, the situation seems hollow, involving one only on the most superficial level. I haven’t seen the original in a long time, but as I recall there was much more of a class element that made the confrontation more meaningful, and there were also others in the cast.
The rivalry here is reduced to its core, with the vicious manipulations played out in an ultra modern house. There is a final twist, but by that time one may have become bored with all of the maneuvering. At the end, there remains a nagging question of why remake a work that had been done so well in the first place. A Sony Pictures Classics and Castle Rock Entertainment release.
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