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Sleuth
Sony Pictures Classics


3.8

based on 30 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 8 votes
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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...

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

It's like "Deathtrap" crossed with "Cribs" as staged by Stanley Kubrick.

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.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

A pretty good movie. It just isn't a very good "Sleuth," exactly.

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.

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.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

I think the movie works best if you know the original and have a taste for goofy revisionism.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Even lousy adaptations have worth, if they attract attention to little-seen originals.

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.

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.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Little more than a sleek, stylish stunt.

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.

Village Voice Ella Taylor

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

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

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.

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.

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 3.8 (out of 10) based on 8 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.

Sleuth Sony Pictures Classics

Sleuth
Sony Pictures Classics