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I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 26 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 9 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Crime | Drama | Suspense/Thriller
Written by: Trevor Preston
Directed by: Mike Hodges
Release Date:
Theatrical: June 18, 2004
DVD: November 16, 2004
Running Time: 103 minutes, Color
Origin: USA / UK
Summary
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)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Croupier Flash Gordon
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
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.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
A near-great British neo-noir, harsh yet hypnotic. Its psychological vortex can suck you in and leave you reeling.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Upon closer inspection its story and characters grow more mysterious, ultimately bordering on the unfathomable.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
In I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, the night grows long while your eyelids grow heavy.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
This plodding British revenge thriller has less energy than a pint of Bass that has sat out overnight.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Variety Derek Elley
Contains interesting ideas, but often those ideas are not fully realized.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
The result is a revenge thriller that's too taken with its own ambience to actually thrill.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
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.
