Sleepers

Year of Release: 1996
Director:  Barry Levinson
Screenplay:  Barry Levinson, based on the book Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra
Starring:  Kevin Bacon, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Bruno Kirby, Jason Patric, Brad Pitt, Brad Renfro, Minnie Driver
Running Time:  147 minutes
Genre:  Crime drama

In the summer of 1967 four boys growing up in the tough Hell's Kitchen neigbourhood of New York City, accidentally injure a pedestrian in a thoughtless prank.  They are sentenced to do time at the Wilkinson Home for Boys, a brutal reform school where they are regularly abused by sadistic guards.  By 1981 the four friends, all affected in different ways by their experiences at Wilkinson, have drifted apart until they are reunited by a violent act of revenge.

This stylish crime drama is based on a controversial bestseller by Lorenzo Carcaterra, which he insists is autobiographical, although there are disclaimers at the end of the film denying the events ever took place.  This is an entertaining, if unwieldy film, which is almost like three in one.  The opening scenes of the film depict the boys (played by Joe Perrino, Brad Renfro, Geoffrey Wigdor and Jonathan Tucker) growing up in Hell's Kitchen, under the watchful eyes of suave local crime boss King Benny (Vittorio Gassman) and tough but kindly Catholic priest Father Bobby (Robert De Niro), and is kind of a coming of age street movie, kind of a cross between Mean Streets (1973), which also starred De Niro, and Stand By Me (1986), with shades of the De Niro directed A Bronx Tale (1993).  The second, and by far the most disturbing passage, which depicts the boys' abuse at the hands of the sadistic guards (headed by Kevin Bacon) feels like a mix of Scum (1979) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994).  In the third and longest section, the film turns into a legal drama, with the boys bow adults (played by Jason Patric, Brad Pitt, Billy Crudup and Ron Eldard).  It's a stylishly made film with the opening section having a bright sun-dappled "summer of innocence" look, and the second section has  bleak, wintery look, with muted colours.  The abuse that the boys suffer is depicted an almost impressionistic way, while it is obvious what is happening, none of it is really shown.  The film's tonal changes are sometimes jarring, but it is an entertaining and involving film, with a fantastic cast, although Brad Pitt fans may be disappointed that he doesn't appear until about an hour into the film. 

Jason Patric and Robert De Niro in Sleepers

Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles

Year: 1994
Director: Neil Jordan
Screenplay: Anne Rice, based on her novel Interview with the Vampire
Starring: Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Kirsten Dunst, Antonio Banderas, Christian Slater, Stephen Rea
Running Time: 122 minutes
Genre: Horror, drama, epic, supernatural

Summary: San Francisco, present day: Malloy (Slater) conducts an interview with Louis (Pitt), who claims to be a vampire. Louis narrates the story of his existence as one of the Undead, beginning in Louisiana, 1791, when, suicidal after the death of his wife in childbirth, Louis is attacked by a powerful vampire, Lestat (Cruise). Lestat teaches Louis how to survive and hunt for blood, while the conscience-stricken Louis turns to feeding on animals in order prevent having to take human life. Fearing that Louis will leave him, Lestat turns a young orphaned girl, Claudia (Dunst), into a vampire, believing that their new "daughter" will encourage him to stay. However, as time passes, resentments between the three grow stronger, with Claudia in particular growing to hate Lestat for trapping her eternally in the body of a child, while Louis becomes pre-occupied by the search for other vampires that might explain their condition.

Opinions: This film is one of the most visually lavish horror films ever made. A full-blown gothic film it revels in the sumptiousness and decay of 18th and 19th Century New Orleans and Paris. Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles series of books, which currently totals ten novels in the main sequence and two in the linked but sepearate New Tales of the Vampires series, have been bestsellers worldwide, and the novel Interview With the Vampire, first published in 1976, was the first in the series. The film mostly follows the book very closely, and manages to eep the novel's strong homoerotic undertones largely intact.
Initially Anne Rice was very vocal in her objection to Tom Cruise playing Lestat (claiming that he was "no more my vampire Lestat than Edward G. Robinson is Rhett Butler"). Her choice for the role was Julian Sands, but the studios wanted a bigger star for the role. After seeing the film, however, she was happy with Cruise's performance, and apparently wrote him a letter of apology. The original choice to play the interviewer, whose name is never mentioned on screen but who is referred to in the credits and in the books as Malloy, was River Phoenix who tragically died four weeks before filming began. Christian Slater, who replaced Phoenix, donated his fee for the film to Phoenix's favourite charities, and there is a dedication to Phoenix at the end of the film. Brad Pitt has the lead role of the tortured Louis and although he never manages to convey Louis constant inner torment, he is suitably melancholy throughout (apparently he hated making the film). The big revelation in the film is Kirsten Dunst, who was twelve years old when the film came out, as the vampire child Claudia. She gives a great performance with a difficult role of a character who, while physically a child has the mind and feelings of an adult.
The movie is slickly directed and has enormous style. The thing is that while it is beautiful to look at and has plenty of gory thrills it is rarely particularly scary. it also moves at a fairly sedate pace. However it is powerful and involving enough to keep the interest of viewers, and not just horror fans. It also has a strong seam of welcome humour.
The film, in keeping with the book, depicts the vampires as dangerous but also glamorous and seductive and not necessarily evil. The main conflict in the story is Louis reluctance to feed on and kill humans versus Lestat's whole-hearted embrace of the vampire state. The Vampire Chronicles really popularised the concept of the darkly romantic, ambiguous and tormented vampires which have become so familiar from Stephenie Meyers' Twilight series and Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries (which were the basis for the TV series True Blood).



Kirsten Dunst, Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in Interview with the Vampire