Verdict
Summary
The final film from Mike Hodges (the original Get Carter, Pulp, Black Rainbow), I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead is a very reserved get-even gangster film that moves like the tortoise in the race against the hare … it gets there eventually. It has a sort of poetic sadness to it, and Owen never gives away any emotion, while Hodges built a pretty specific kind of world around him. Is it satisfying? Well, it depends on your point of view.
Plot:
An ex-gangster comes back to his old gang when his brother is found dead.
Review:
Living off the grid in his van, taking logging jobs where and when he can without filling out any paperwork, Will Graham (Clive Owen) used to be a well-respected gangster in London, with a gang, with money, with a life. It’s been three years, and he’s been living pretty rough, but it’s the life he wants now, and when word gets to him that his younger brother (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), a low-level drug pusher, was found dead with a slit throat in his bathtub (fully clothed), Will is coaxed out of his seclusion and returns to the old neighborhood to bury his brother … and to get answers. It turns out that his brother was raped (we see it happen early in the film, which honestly should have been a “big reveal” later on because it’s the most important moment in the movie), and Will refuses to believe that it was consensual, and indeed it wasn’t: A much-higher-up gangster (played by Malcolm McDowell) raped him to prove a point and make the guy feel like less than nothing. Well, it worked, because he ended up slitting his own throat as a result. When Will gets down to the answer he’s been looking for, his revenge will be short and merciless.
The final film from Mike Hodges (the original Get Carter, Pulp, Black Rainbow), I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead is a very reserved get-even gangster film that moves like the tortoise in the race against the hare … it gets there eventually. It has a sort of poetic sadness to it, and Owen never gives away any emotion, while Hodges built a pretty specific kind of world around him. Is it satisfying? Well, it depends on your point of view. I feel like the movie is inherently flawed by giving away who the rapist is so soon. If Hodges had used that as a mystery, the movie might’ve been much more compelling and we’d learn the truth as the protagonist gets closer to it, but as it is, there’s no mystery or suspense to it, which feels like the wrong approach. I remember seeing this theatrically in ’04, and feeling the same way. Time hasn’t changed anything there.
Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray for I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead comes in a new HD master (I can’t believe the film is over 20 years old already) from a 4K scan of the original camera negative, so this has likely been the best the film has ever looked or sounded. Hodges (who died a few years back) did a commentary for the original DVD release, which is included here, and there’s a little feature on him as well. There are deleted scenes and a trailer, plus a slipcover.
