Today’s quick review: Sleepless. When Las Vegas detective Vincent Downs (Jamie Foxx) and his partner Sean Cass (Tip “T.I.” Harris) steal 25 kilos of cocaine from casino manager Stanley Rubino (Dermot Mulroney), Rubino retaliates by kidnapping Vincent’s son Thomas (Octavius J. Johnson). Vincent tries to return the stolen drugs, but he runs into more trouble when Internal Affairs officer Jennifer Bryant (Michelle Monaghan) follows him to the casino.
Sleepless is an action movie about a police officer trying to save his son from a dangerous criminal. The bulk of the action takes place at the Luxus Casino, where Downs runs into Bryant, her partner Doug Dennison (David Harbour), and Rubino’s buyer Rob Novak (Scoot McNairy) while trying to swap the drugs for his son. The movie’s elaborate setup and decent action scenes are hampered by a script that does a clumsy job of moving its pieces into place.
Sleepless makes for decent action fodder. There are only a couple of big-ticket stunts, but Vincent’s one-on-one fights throughout the casino do a good job of keeping the adrenaline up. The plot also has potential: a tangled web of unlucky breaks, police corruption, and Internal Affairs investigations that keeps all the major characters on their toes. Sleepless does not bring anything too special to the table, but it gets the basics right.
Where Sleepless runs into problems is with its plot progression. The components of the story—a drug deal gone wrong, a kidnapping, an Internal Affairs investigation—all work well on paper, but the way they play out leaves something to be desired. The developments the movie uses to raise the stakes are blunt, many of the twists are predictable, and key moments of the plot depend on either contrived coincidences or major mistakes by the characters.
The result is a passable action movie with a few good ideas, some notable flaws, and nothing truly special to offer. Fans of the action genre looking for something chaotic and reasonably entertaining should give Sleepless a shot. Viewers looking for a movie with stronger stunts or a more cerebral plot will want to look elsewhere.
For a crime drama with an elaborate plot and better execution, try The Departed, The Way of the Gun, or Insomnia. For a more compelling action thriller about a kidnapped teenager, try Taken.
5.6 out of 10 on IMDB. I give it a 6.0 to 6.5 for a promising setup with mixed execution.