Sleuth, 2007

A real knockout that I will defend against its detractors. Director Kenneth Branagh has made a ballsy tough-mindgame of theatrics into an enthralling story of battling wits. Men sparring over love, admiration and humiliation. Oh, yeah, and the woman between them. The late playwright and Nobel-prize winner Harold Pinter's script is a dazzling reworking of the old play/movie (by someone else), made into something scintillating and razor-sharp. He has made some conscious decisions about less ambiguously defining the sparring match that probably underlay the earlier versions but are made more contemporary here--some may dispute that or regret the resulting overt social impropriety. And it is all the more arresting for its enclosed world: a vaguely post-modern set which is a combination of Hamlet's castle, '90s high-style hotel lobby , and Dr. Caligari's technogarden. I have a small quibble about a central deception, which perhaps was less effective for me----I think because I had some dim memory of the previous version, but the energy of the performances overcome this midpoint lag. A stunning example of the filmmaker's art and thrill. Jude Law and Michael Caine are both simply astounding and subtle. A rocket ride worth at least three stars, but I'll give it five for the whoosh of the Branagh/Pinter style and the audacity of its performances. Not for the squeamish (brutal social psychology, not blood), or those unable to bookend it with its equally honorable, if rather different and more nicely mannered, predecessor. 3-09

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