Today’s quick review: Sleuth. Michael Caine stars as Andrew Wyke, a wealthy, aging writer who lives alone in a mansion. Jude Law co-stars as Milo Tindle, the young, struggling actor that Andrew’s wife ran off with. When Andrew invites Milo to his estate, Milo shows up with the hope of getting Andrew to sign his divorce papers and finally let his wife go. But Andrew has other plans, and their conversation moves from tense to bizarre as the pair match wits in an impromptu game of honor and humiliation.
Sleuth is a minimalistic cat-and-mouse thriller structured like a stage play. The film focuses on the wending conversation between Andrew and Milo, the barbs they hurl at each other, and the peculiar consequences when their conflict escalates. The film handles its suspense well, establishing a dark, uncertain tone and holding it for as long as it can. The plot is fittingly difficult to predict, and both Michael Caine and Jude Law deliver solid performances as a pair of driven men each searching for an advantage to use against the other.
But for all that Sleuth effectively conveys a sense of mystery, there is little point to the movie. The minimalistic cast and setting wear thin, the twists and turns of the plot are arbitrary, and neither of the main characters is very sympathetic. The movie appears to be an investigation into forms of power and what two obsessed men are capable of, but the minimalistic execution means that the movie lives and dies on this one theme. Weaving this theme and this character dynamic into a fuller movie could have produced interesting results, but as it is, Sleuth gives little reason to watch it beyond its exceptional tone.
Watch Sleuth only if you are into minimalistic, experimental films with a dark tone. Sleuth does do a good job of establishing a tone, setting up plot twists, and boiling a battle of wits down to its essentials, but there is nothing else going on. Skip Sleuth if you prefer more meat on your movies’ bones, you dislike morally ambiguous characters, or you dislike pervasive, uncertain tension.
6.5 out of 10 on IMDB. I also give it a 6.5 for a decent build-up but very little payoff.