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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

67
$9.99
75
24 City
66
Adoration
74
Afghan Star
48
Alien Trespass
56
American Violet
82
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57
Away We Go
81
Beaches of Agnes, The
62
Big Man Japan
28
Big Shot-Caller, The
78
Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55
Brothers Bloom, The
82
Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx
Call of the Wild
63
Cheri
62
Cherry Blossoms
63
Dead Snow
65
Departures
18
Downloading Nancy
58
Easy Virtue
70
End of the Line, The
77
Every Little Step
64
Examined Life
80
Food, Inc.
38
Gigantic
56
Girl from Monaco, The
67
Girlfriend Experience, The
87
Gomorrah
89
Goodbye Solo
63
Great Buck Howard, The
79
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx
Home
82
Hunger
91
Hurt Locker, The
16
I Hate Valentine's Day
81
Il Divo
54
Is Anybody There?
71
Jerichow
58
Julia
74
Lemon Tree
36
Life is Hot in Cracktown
40
Limits of Control, The
42
Little Ashes
64
Lymelife
50
Management
57
Merry Gentleman, The
66
Moon
35
New York
62
Not Forgotten
xx
Offshore
78
O'Horten
64
Outrage
40
Paris 36
54
Pontypool
71
Pressure Cooker
52
Quiet Chaos
83
Revanche
67
Rudo y Cursi
86
Seraphine
65
Sex Positive
70
Shall We Kiss?
77
Sin Nombre
59
Sleep Dealer
74
Song of Sparrows, The
54
Stoning of Soraya M., The
82
Sugar
84
Summer Hours
61
Sunshine Cleaning
28
Surveillance
42
Tennessee
63
Tetro
64
Throw Down Your Heart
80
Tokyo Sonata
63
Tokyo!
70
Tony Manero
74
Treeless Mountain
88
Tulpan
74
Two Lovers
83
Tyson
83
U2 3D
60
Under Our Skin
69
Unmistaken Child
69
Valentino: The Last Emperor
22
What Goes Up
45
Whatever Works
57
Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love
91
Hurt Locker, The
89
Goodbye Solo
88
Tulpan
87
Gomorrah
86
Seraphine
84
Summer Hours
83
U2 3D
83
Revanche
83
Tyson
82
Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
82
Sugar
82
Hunger
82
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
81
Il Divo
81
Beaches of Agnes, The
80
Food, Inc.
80
Tokyo Sonata
79
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
78
Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
78
O'Horten
77
Every Little Step
77
Sin Nombre
75
24 City
74
Treeless Mountain
74
Afghan Star
74
Two Lovers
74
Song of Sparrows, The
74
Lemon Tree
71
Pressure Cooker
71
Jerichow
70
Shall We Kiss?
70
Tony Manero
70
End of the Line, The
69
Valentino: The Last Emperor
69
Unmistaken Child
67
$9.99
67
Rudo y Cursi
67
Girlfriend Experience, The
66
Adoration
66
Moon
65
Sex Positive
65
Departures
64
Outrage
64
Examined Life
64
Throw Down Your Heart
64
Lymelife
63
Tokyo!
63
Cheri
63
Dead Snow
63
Tetro
63
Great Buck Howard, The
62
Cherry Blossoms
62
Big Man Japan
62
Not Forgotten
61
Sunshine Cleaning
60
Under Our Skin
59
Sleep Dealer
58
Julia
58
Easy Virtue
57
Away We Go
57
Merry Gentleman, The
57
Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love
56
Girl from Monaco, The
56
American Violet
55
Brothers Bloom, The
54
Is Anybody There?
54
Pontypool
54
Stoning of Soraya M., The
52
Quiet Chaos
50
Management
48
Alien Trespass
45
Whatever Works
42
Little Ashes
42
Tennessee
40
Limits of Control, The
40
Paris 36
38
Gigantic
36
Life is Hot in Cracktown
35
New York
28
Big Shot-Caller, The
28
Surveillance
22
What Goes Up
18
Downloading Nancy
16
I Hate Valentine's Day
xx
Call of the Wild
xx
Home
xx
Offshore
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Sleuth
Sony Pictures Classics
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for strong language
Starring
Michael Caine,
Jude Law,
Harold Pinter,
and
Eve Channing
A millionaire detective novelist matches wits with the unemployed actor who ran off with his wife in a deadly serious, seriously twisted game with dangerous consequences. (Sony Pictures Classics)
| GENRE(S): |
Comedy
|
Drama
|
Mystery
|
Suspense/Thriller
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Anthony Shaffer (play)
Harold Pinter
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Kenneth Branagh
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: March 11, 2008
Theatrical: October 12, 2007
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
86 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |

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...
75
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
It's like "Deathtrap" crossed with "Cribs" as staged by Stanley Kubrick.

75
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Caine, who has never been much for the stage, is a superb screen actor, so good his master classes on acting for the camera are on DVD. Here, dry and clipped, biting and savage, he goes for the kill.

75
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
A pretty good movie. It just isn't a very good "Sleuth," exactly.

70
Los Angeles Times
Carina Chocano
Language this lethal has all but disappeared from the movies, and it's an unmitigated pleasure to observe Caine and Law attack it with such ferocity. Sleuth is nasty fun.

70
Salon.com
Andrew O'Hehir
Sleuth is well acted, and directed by Branagh with chilly, distant ingenuity. It has a certain edge and daring, or more to the point it pretends to.

70
New York Magazine
David Edelstein
I think the movie works best if you know the original and have a taste for goofy revisionism.

70
The Hollywood Reporter
Ray Bennett
Despite top-flight acting from Michael Caine and Jude Law, it loses its grip in the third act and let's the air out of what might have been a memorably gripping film.

63
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
The 1972 movie was better paced and presented a superior story but this one has its own pleasures. It's an interesting failure - a film that works more successfully as a study of technique and writing than as a motion picture.

63
USA Today
Claudia Puig
While the entire premise of Sleuth is a gimmick, having Michael Caine and Jude Law remake the 1972 adaptation of Anthony Shaffer's Tony Award-winning play heightens the gimmick quotient.

63
New York Post
Kyle Smith
Just when things should be getting exciting and complex, they become repetitive and predictable. Subtext becomes hint becomes statement becomes declaration. For once, Pinter is a little too easy to understand.

63
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
Caine and Law may not be playing human beings, but Pinter’s sense of humor is at least more interesting than Shaffer’s. Caine in particular appears to enjoy honing his cold-eyed stare.

58
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
At 86 minutes, Sleuth '07 plays like a Cliffs Notes version of the original (which was skillfully adapted by Anthony Shaffer from his own hit play) with far too much of its pacing and delicious texture ruthlessly cut.

50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
A high-pedigree, low-interest affair that serves mostly as an exercise in postmortem speculation: Why is a project with so many prominent names attached to it so sterile and lifeless?

50
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
This might have been OK for cable, but as a night out at the movies, it feels like a bit of a cheat.

50
Portland Oregonian
M. E. Russell
It's not a disaster: Branagh is an actor's director, and there are biting moments throughout and solid performances from Caine and Law.

50
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
The result is unfortunate: Pinter can't find emotional depths that just aren't there, but dispenses with most of what made the original entertaining in the search for them.

50
New York Daily News
Elizabeth Weitzman
Even lousy adaptations have worth, if they attract attention to little-seen originals.

50
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
The new version is a shiny piece of hardware that might as well be called "Sleuth 2.0," and it's exactly what you would expect from Pinter: very clever, extremely cold. Maliciously entertaining, too, until the halfway point, when you suddenly start wondering why anyone should care.

50
San Francisco Chronicle
Ruthe Stein
Sleuth"is that rare film that would have been better longer. You're not through looking at Caine and Law when the final credits roll.

50
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
Little more than a sleek, stylish stunt.

50
Variety
Robert Koehler
The results will be received with a large, loud yawn by all but the most loyal fans of Pinter and hard-working co-stars Michael Caine and Jude Law.

40
Village Voice
Ella Taylor
Whatever pleasure can be wrung from Sleuth lies in the black comedy of Caine and Law's sinuous symbiosis.

40
Austin Chronicle
Josh Rosenblatt
It takes something really special to bring together a Nobel Prize-winning writer, a director renowned for his Shakespeare adaptations, a two-time Oscar-winning actor who also happens to be a knight of the British realm, and the reigning No. 1 British screen heartthrob and still come up with nonsense.

40
Empire
Simon Crook
Minus a couple of brisk, black laughs, this hollow remake botches the twists and sucks the fun right out of its feisty source.

40
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
Director Kenneth Branagh has mercifully pared the action down to 88 minutes (the first movie dragged on for 138), but the final act, with its obscure homosexual flirtation, still seems to go on forever.

38
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
Art-directed within an inch of its life, Sleuth has the smirky gloss of a project that everyone involved with thinks is terribly good, and terribly clever. These people - Branagh, Pinter, Law and the usually great Caine (even in bad stuff) - are laboring under an epic misconception. Sleuth is just terrible.

38
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
This is a perhaps even more misbegotten remake than the Farrelly Brothers' update of "The Heartbreak Kid."

33
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
No doubt the list of talent involved in this remake sounded great, but the project hasn't been thought through as anything more than an arch exercise in style. And even in that trifling end, it fails utterly.

30
Time
Richard Corliss
If you consider what the exalted quartet of Branagh, Pinter, Caine and Law might have done with the project, and what they did to it, Sleuth has to be the worst prestige movie of the year.

30
The New York Times
Manohla Dargis
The result is that what was once insignificant is now insufferable.


The average user rating for this movie is 3.3 (out of 10) based on 10 User Votes
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