I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead

Year: 2003

Grade: C-

Country: UK

Director: Hodges

Review

uninspired, uninteresting and slowly paced film from the same guy who did get carter and croupier. clive owen gets more roles than his talent merits. one interesting thing about the film is that hodges chooses to skip over moments that would be covered by most directors. when owen comes back home to see his dead brother, for example, his mother has to break the news to him. her doing this is skipped and the edit goes from owen coming into the front door to him opening the bathroom door where his brother committed suicide. why hodges chose to not include the news being broken is unclear. another example is when owen shaves his beard and gets a haircut to symbolize his return to his old gangster ways. this would normally be an important scene, but is edited out by showing the barber’s sheet going over owen’s body before and then immediately being lifted to reveal a clean cut owen. these decisions are odd considering using time for moments like these seem warranted, especially relative to the time he wastes in the first part of the film – the first hour should have been edited down to about 20-30 minutes. just not a very well-done or interesting film overall.