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I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
Paramount Classics


5.5

based on 26 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 9 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for language, a rape scene, violent images and brief drug use

Starring Clive Owen, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Charlotte Rampling, Malcolm McDowell, Noel Clarke, Jamie Foreman, Sylvia Syms, and Ken Stott

An exploration of family, revenge and the conflicts inherent in trying to escape one's past. (Paramount Classics)

GENRE(S):	Crime \| Drama \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Trevor Preston
DIRECTED BY:	Mike Hodges
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: November 16, 2004 Video: November 16, 2004 Theatrical: June 18, 2004
RUNNING TIME:	103 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA / UK

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Mike Hodges' gritty new film noir I'll Sleep When I'm Dead begins in enigma and snakes its way into stark clarity.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

A near-great British neo-noir, harsh yet hypnotic. Its psychological vortex can suck you in and leave you reeling.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The film is held together by Clive Owen, who spends most of his time on screen hidden beneath matted hair and a scruffy beard but still has more aura than any actor around.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Upon closer inspection its story and characters grow more mysterious, ultimately bordering on the unfathomable.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

The spare and unsparing tone of I'll Sleep When I'm Dead makes it as existential -- and as original -- a whodunit as they come.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

In order to appreciate I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, you have to be willing to absorb unhurried film noir, and to accept that the film's version of "closure" is a little frustrating.

San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer

In I'll Sleep When I'm Dead,' master of stylish criminality Mike Hodges presents a nighttime London of sharp suits, distorted jazz notes and shiny luxury sedans cruising dirty streets.

The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett

The finish, too, is enigmatic, but in the hands of Hodges, with his masterful touch in conveying how deep run the rivers of regret, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead may take its place with "Get Carter" as a classic British gangster film.

Time Richard Schickel

If you surrender to the film's often inexplicable rhythms, if you let its dark materials reach out and envelop you, it can be a curiously rewarding experience -- a blend of silences and sudden bursts of violence that, despite its highly stylized manner, feels more edgily lifelike and more disturbing than most movies.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

"Croupier," the director's comeback film of 2000, which also starred Mr. Owen, is a riskier, more interesting exercise in English noir than I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, but the new film, whose title comes from a Warren Zevon song, nonetheless serves as a fine stylistic showpiece.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Though there's less to the film than seduces the eye, the allure of those surfaces can be hypnotic.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead has its problems: As beautifully made as it is, Hodges leaves some crucial portions of the story maddeningly unclear, particularly at the end.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

At times, this makes the film easier to appreciate than it is to watch: The story is perfectly clear, but the film's style takes its cues from the characters' oblique emotions in a way designed to freeze viewers out.

Film Threat Staff (Not credited)

A consuming and stimulating work and a theoretical thriller, it is a film which could only be created by a remarkably skillful filmmaker.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Hodges cuts the film like a diamond, but it's just an exercise in cut glass, an impressive surface that only looks tough.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

This sad, dark movie moves across the screen like a sleepwalker, aloof and belonging neither to this world or the next.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

In I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, the night grows long while your eyelids grow heavy.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It has great mood and a sense of the toughness of the London underworld, but it never really gets into gear.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Director Mike Hodges and screenwriter Trevor Preston's dark revenge tale strips its crime-story cliches of their hopped-up energy and seedy glamour, leaving nothing but sordid sadness.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

This plodding British revenge thriller has less energy than a pint of Bass that has sat out overnight.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

An atmospheric but sluggish and needlessly confusing British contemporary film noir that may indeed leave some audience members struggling to stay awake.

Variety Derek Elley

Contains interesting ideas, but often those ideas are not fully realized.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Owen, perhaps for want of any definition to his character, turns in a performance at once so blank and so bloated with lugubrious bombast, one wants to chuck him under the chin and make him giggle.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

It's dank, moody and sorrowful (all pros for this critic), but also tediously vague, thematically plodding and often eye-rollingly absurd in its grimness. Some may swoon; I yawned a lot.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

The result is a revenge thriller that's too taken with its own ambience to actually thrill.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

Wallows in the same affected retro stylishness as the earlier film (Croupier), suffers from the same lack of narrative focus, and is just as choked with clichés.

The average user rating for this movie is 5.5 (out of 10) based on 9 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Dan C. gave it a7:
Clive Owen is so good that the film rates a 7 on the strength of his performance alone. It's a humorless (and therefore incomplete) look at London gangster life, but oddly compelling.

Kel R. gave it a1:
I agree with Brian G. I had high hopes for this movie and boy was I disappointed.

montgomery s. gave it a10:
Brilliant british revenge film. One of the most beautiful, rewarding, and interesting takes on the genre in years.

Brian G. gave it a1:
This may be one of the worst British crime dramas ever. The dialogue is cliched and predictable, the characters lack any clear or logical motivations for their actions (particularly McDowell), and the entire story hinges upon an incident that, while violent, is reacted to as though it were the End Of Life As We Know It. It comes across as though it were written by an 11-year-old. Owen had better material in his BMW commercials, and Rampling...what the hell is she even doing in this movie?

[Anonymous] gave it a10:
Great movie! Intense and mesmerizing. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is a stunner...

Paula W. gave it a 6:
If this film looked or sounded any more slick, it would slide right off the screen. Sadly it seems the plot also had a little trouble finding something to stick to because it doesn't exactly hang together. If you just think of the characters as archetypes (The Apprentice, The Avenger, The Spurned but Patient Woman, The Sidekick, The Upstart, The Monster) and don't worry too much about pinpointing who is who and why, then you can still enjoy the glamour. Don't get me wrong, I've always got time for Clive Owen, and Charlotte Rampling is a talent to be reckoned with; but overall, I'd have to say that as thrillers go, this is a great vodka commercial.

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I'll Sleep When I'm Dead Paramount Classics

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
Paramount Classics