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Sleuth
EMAILPRINTSony Pictures Classics
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 30 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 10 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Comedy | Drama | Mystery | Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Anthony Shaffer (play)
Harold Pinter
Directed by: Kenneth Branagh
Release Date:
Theatrical: October 12, 2007
DVD: March 11, 2008
Running Time: 86 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
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)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Dead Again Henry V Love's Labour's Lost
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...
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
It's like "Deathtrap" crossed with "Cribs" as staged by Stanley Kubrick.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
A pretty good movie. It just isn't a very good "Sleuth," exactly.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
I think the movie works best if you know the original and have a taste for goofy revisionism.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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?
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
Even lousy adaptations have worth, if they attract attention to little-seen originals.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Ella Taylor
Whatever pleasure can be wrung from Sleuth lies in the black comedy of Caine and Law's sinuous symbiosis.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Premiere Glenn Kenny
This is a perhaps even more misbegotten remake than the Farrelly Brothers' update of "The Heartbreak Kid."
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
The result is that what was once insignificant is now insufferable.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 3.3 (out of 10) based on 10 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Chad S. gave it a7:
They're only acting, Andrew(Michael Caine) and Milo(Jude Law); slipping on other skins is how the novelist and actor butter their bread. Both men shoot Harold Pinter's words at each other with cold precision. They duel in rooms illuminated by a blue light. Their mouths are benign guns. Andrew is just pretending, like a blank pretends to be a bullet, when the novelist aims his pistol at Milo. It's a game. The jewel heist, nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Both robbery attempts are deconstructive and anti-climactic. "Sleuth" is really about identity. In the endgame, the blue light affixes itself to Milo alone, while the sudden appearance of the red light seeks out Andrew in melancholic repose. Perhaps, these are the two men as they really are, finally, in three-dimensions, the truth comes out as the red and blue lights converge and produce a white light; an x-ray light.
Jay H. gave it a5:
It's an interesting twist having Michael Caine in the opposite role he played in the 1972 version, but this film doesn't work nearly as well as that version. I was thoroughly unimpressed with Kenneth Branaugh's direction. It's all show and not enough. Jude law needs to stop remaking films from 30 and 40 years ago.
Johnny A. gave it a0:
nothing spectacular, nothing good, a letdown overall, many flaws make a huge difference, once you find ehm' all, at the theatre, the popcorn, pop, and direction was all that was fun, this is entertaining, but literally it sucks.
Mark C. gave it a0:
A very good original, and a very bad remake, Michael Caine doesn't do anything, a serious bore, way too short and cheesy.
D L. gave it a1:
Rancid. The whole unveiling of the mystery inspector was terribly and unconvincingly rotten. The 1972 version had surprise. This version has nothing. Disappointed in Branagh, whose film "Dead Again" showed a good cinematic eye.
Jared C. gave it a5:
You know, I've never really liked Sleuth first of all, but I saw it because I wanted a change of taste from all those boring action/adventure movies. Well, how do I put it, it wasn't that great. It was harshly too short to be true. Like, come on, you probably could have added an extra hour if you wanted to. Just, the film itself isn't to go see in the theatres and be really excited to watch a movie at Cineplex. Well, I'd change your movie to Michael Clayton because Sleuth isn't a film worth seeing. So, just for the heads up, rent it when it comes out. Or, watch it on Shaw when it comes out because trust me, it's not worth renting for 3 bucks. Just watch it when it comes and starts playing on Shaw or Cable.
Emma G. gave it a9:
Great performances, Law and Caine are brilliant, fantastic dialogues and, last but not least, amazing work by Kenneth Branagh.
