REVIEWED - I'LL SLEEP WHEN I'M DEAD: About halfway through Mike Hodges's unsatisfactory follow-up to Croupier, Clive Owen - gruff, uncommunicative, coiled - consults a psychiatrist to discover why his brother, a minor hoodlum played with skeletal vacancy by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, committed suicide. Speaking patronisingly slowly, the expert explains that the lad was the victim of what we scientists call "non-consensual buggery".
This preposterous scene is characteristic of a film whose brilliantly sustained mood is undermined by outbreaks of shockingly clumsy dialogue and adolescent posturing. We wouldn't forgive a student film-maker for decorating a leading character's flat with nothing but John Coltrane posters, so why make excuses for the septuagenarian Mr Hodges? Shame.
The missteps are worth caring about, because so much of the rest of I'll Sleep When I'm Dead is impressive. Owen, who has been living in the country trying to forget his criminal past, seems certain to take violent revenge as he prowls the streets of Brixton in search of the villain who violently raped his brother. (It is, of course, Malcolm McDowell.)
Though the plot is notably similar to that of Hodges's Get Carter, this is more sombre, unenlivened by even Carter's pitch-black humour. There is no director more skilled at drawing gloomy poetry from dank English locations, and Owen, the charismatic star of Croupier, is ideally suited to that art.
But no amount of expertly rendered ambience can distract from the preposterous and ultimately bewildering plot. What on earth is the significance of the disconnected final scenes? Considering some of the guff that has gone before, we're probably better off not knowing.
