Sleuth (2007 film)
Encyclopedia
Sleuth is a 2007 thriller film directed by Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from Northern Ireland. He is best known for directing and starring in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays including Henry V , Much Ado About Nothing , Hamlet Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from...

 and starring Jude Law
Jude Law
David Jude Heyworth Law , known professionally as Jude Law, is an English actor, film producer and director.He began acting with the National Youth Music Theatre in 1987, and had his first television role in 1989...

  and Michael Caine
Michael Caine
Sir Michael Caine, CBE is an English actor. He won Academy Awards for best supporting actor in both Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules ....

. The screenplay by Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...

 is an adaption of Anthony Shaffer's Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...

-winning play Sleuth
Sleuth (play)
Sleuth is a 1970 play written by Anthony Shaffer. The play is set in the Wiltshire, England manor house of Andrew Wyke, an immensely successful mystery writer. His home reflects Wyke's obsession with the inventions and deceptions of fiction and his fascination with games and game-playing...

. Caine had previously starred in a 1972 version, where he played Law's role against Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...

.

Cast

  • Michael Caine
    Michael Caine
    Sir Michael Caine, CBE is an English actor. He won Academy Awards for best supporting actor in both Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules ....

     as Andrew Wyke
  • Jude Law
    Jude Law
    David Jude Heyworth Law , known professionally as Jude Law, is an English actor, film producer and director.He began acting with the National Youth Music Theatre in 1987, and had his first television role in 1989...

     as Milo Tindle
  • Harold Pinter
    Harold Pinter
    Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...

     as Man on TV
  • Carmel O'Sullivan as Maggie
  • Kenneth Branagh
    Kenneth Branagh
    Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from Northern Ireland. He is best known for directing and starring in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays including Henry V , Much Ado About Nothing , Hamlet Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from...

     as Man being questioned by Harold Pinter on TV.

Synopsis

"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."
Much the same as the original except
  • Tindle does not pretend to murder the mistress of Wyke, instead he pretends to perform the robbery he set up for before
  • Wyke now tries to seduce Tindle
  • At the end it appears Wyke got off scot free, as opposed to the original where Wyke is likely to be arrested

History

Caine had starred as Tindle opposite Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...

's Wyke in the 1972 film Sleuth. In the 2007 film, Caine took the role of Andrew Wyke, and Law took Caine's original role of Tindle. This was the second film in which Law performed a role originated by Caine, the first having been the title role of Alfie
Alfie (2004 film)
Alfie is a 2004 British/American comedy-drama film based on the 1966 British film of the same name, starring Jude Law as the title character, originally played by Michael Caine. The film was written, directed and produced by Charles Shyer.-Plot:...

. Caine himself had previously starred in two different roles in two versions of the same movie with Get Carter
Get Carter
Get Carter is a 1971 British crime film directed by Mike Hodges and starring Michael Caine as Jack Carter, a gangster who sets out to avenge the death of his brother in a series of unrelenting and brutal killings played out against the grim background of derelict urban housing in the city of...

.

According to most accounts, the film should have been a remake of the 1972 film, but Pinter's screenplay offered "a fresh take" on Shaffer's play and "a very different form" from the original film. In his review of the film's debut at the 2007 Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...

, Roderick Conway Morris observed: "The reworking of the play is not just an adept transformation of theatre to film ... but also casts a revealing light on social history, reflecting the enormous changes in English society, language and morals in the nearly 40 years since the play first appeared on the London stage."

The screenwriter, the actors and the director explained that this version of Sleuth was not a "remake." Law called it "a completely reinvented Sleuth... It didn't feel like a remake. I always loved the idea at its heart of two men battling it out for a woman you never meet." Law further felt that he "was creating a character [Milo Tindle], I wasn't recreating one." Caine said, "I never felt that I had gone back to Sleuth", and called the Pinter script "an entirely different thing. There isn't a single line in it that was in the other one, and Pinter had never seen the [1972] movie. Jude [Law] gave him the stage play and said, 'Write a screenplay for me' ... It was a completely different experience." In a television interview conducted on RAI TV during the Venice International Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...

, Caine stated: "If the script hadn't been by Harold Pinter, I wouldn't have done the movie."

Pinter said, "It's a totally new take. ... I had not either seen or read the play, and I hadn't seen the film adapted from the play either, so I knew nothing about it. So I simply read the play and I think it's totally transformed. I've kept one or two plot things because you have to but apart from that, I think I've made it my own."

Michael Caine stated: "The first Sleuth I thought was great and the second Sleuth I thought was great until I read the reviews. I said to Pinter, 'What film did they show them?' I have a feeling that [the new] Sleuth will be rediscovered some day."

Screenings

After premiering at the 64th Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...

 on August 30, 2007, Sleuth was screened at the Toronto Film Festival
2007 Toronto International Film Festival
The 2007 Toronto International Film Festival was a 32nd annual film festival held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It ran from September 6, 2007 to September 15, 2007. The lineup consisted of 349 films from 55 countries, selected from 4156 submissions...

 on September 10, 2007. It was also screened at the Atlantic Film Festival
Atlantic Film Festival
The Atlantic Film Festival is an international film festival held in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.Held annually, the ten-day celebration of film and video from Atlantic Canada and around the world is committed to screening an inspiring and engaging collection of films and videos from Canada and the...

, in Halifax
City of Halifax
Halifax is a city in Canada, which was the capital of the province of Nova Scotia and shire town of Halifax County. It was the largest city in Atlantic Canada until it was amalgamated into Halifax Regional Municipality in 1996...

, on September 22, 2007, the Aspen FilmFest on September 26, 2007, the Copenhagen International Film Festival
Copenhagen International Film Festival
Copenhagen International Film Festival is a film festival held in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was first held in 2003, and is held annually. The main award at the Copenhagen International Film Festival is the Golden Swan, which will be awarded for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best...

, on September 27, 2007, the Calgary International Film Festival
Calgary International Film Festival
The Calgary International Film Festival is a film festival held annually in Calgary, Alberta, Canada for ten days in late September and early October...

, in Alberta
Alberta
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...

, on September 28, 2007 and the Haifa International Film Festival
Haifa International Film Festival
The Haifa International Film Festival is an annual film festival that takes place every fall, during the week-long holiday of Sukkot, in Haifa, Israel. The festival was inaugurated in 1983, and was the first of its kind in Israel...

 on October 1, 2007.

On October 3 and October 4, 2007, Sleuth was screened at Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

’s 2007 Screening Series
in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, at the Chelsea West Cinemas, and in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, at the ArcLight Theatre. Kenneth Branagh, Michael Caine and Jude Law made interviews on the television programs The Today Show, RAI TV, The Late Show with David Letterman, The Charlie Rose Show, and Reel Talk
Reel Talk
Reel Talk is a syndicated weekend movie review series hosted by film critics Jeffrey Lyons and Alison Bailes. It was produced by, and originally ran exclusively on, WNBC, a New York City NBC affiliate.-Airtimes:...

with Jeffrey Lyons
Jeffrey Lyons (television critic)
Jeffrey Lyons is an American television and film critic.-Life and career:Lyons was born in New York City, one of the four sons of Sylvia and Leonard Lyons...

.

Reviews

Manohla Dargis
Manohla Dargis
Manohla Dargis is a chief film critic for The New York Times, along with A.O. Scott. She was formerly a chief film critic for the Los Angeles Times, the film editor at the LA Weekly, and a film critic at The Village Voice. She has written for a variety of publications, including Film Comment and...

 from The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

wrote a review headlined "A Dance of Two Men, Twisting and Turning With a Gun That's More Than a Gun." In contrast to Sarah Lyall
Sarah Lyall
Sarah Lambert Lyall is an American-born English journalist, who currently works as London correspondent for The New York Times.-Biography:...

's New York Times preview, Dargis wrote that she did not like watching the film, finding it too claustrophobic: "Mr. Branagh fiddles with the lights, tilts the camera and hustles his hard-working actors upstairs and down and back again and into an elevator as small as a coffin built for one. He embellishes the screenplay’s every obvious conceit and word, hammering the point until you feel as if you’re trapped inside the elevator with Milo and Andrew, going up and down and up and down, though nowhere in particular."

In his interview with Martin A. Grove, Branagh mentions that the danger of inducing claustrophobia
Claustrophobia
Claustrophobia is the fear of having no escape and being closed in small spaces or rooms...

 in audience members is a risk that he took into account in filming Sleuth: "What Branagh didn't do that many Hollywood directors would have done is to open the film up by, for instance, having the two men drive to a nearby pub at some point in their conversation. 'Well, it's interesting you say that,' he told [Grove], 'There were discussions about that, but we said, 'If we believe in the power of the writing here and the power of the performances, but also, frankly, if we believe in the audience and believe that the audience can find this as fascinating as I do on the pages and if we can realize it to meet all of their expectations then the claustrophobia (won't be a problem).' "

Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

film reviewer Richard Corliss
Richard Corliss
Richard Nelson Corliss is a writer for Time magazine who focuses on movies, with the occasional article on music or sports. Corliss is the former editor-in-chief of Film Comment...

 indicated he was not pleased with the outcome, concluding: "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."

Claudia Puig of USA Today was more appreciative: "Caine and Law are in fine form bantering cleverly in this entertaining cat-and-mouse game, thanks to the inspired dialogue of Harold Pinter. They parry, using witticisms instead of swords. Then they do a dance of deception, a veritable tango. There's thievery, peril and plenty of double-crossing. ... As directed by Kenneth Branagh, this new version is darker and more claustrophobic. In the original the house where all the action took place was Gothic and laden with gewgaws. The new domicile is stark and minimalist, and much more threatening. Branagh's version has more incipient horror and less camp."

Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

 of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "It's no mystery that 'Sleuth' is fascinating," observing that Pinter "has written a new country house mystery, which is not really a mystery at all in terms of its plot, and eerily impenetrable in its human relationship" and that "in 'Sleuth' what [Kenneth Branagh] celebrates is perplexing, ominous, insinuating material in the hands of two skilled actors."

Carina Chocano, writing in the Los Angeles Times, stated: "The verbal sparring is so sharp [that] it's a wonder nobody loses an eye. ... it's an unmitigated pleasure to observe Caine and Law attack it with such ferocity...."

Leonard Maltin
Leonard Maltin
Leonard Maltin is an American film and animated film critic and historian, author of several mainstream books on cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives.-Personal life:...

 was one of the few critics to give the film a BOMB rating, the lowest rating he has ever given a Branagh film, stating that the new version "has every ounce of entertainment drained from it" and called the film "unbelievably bad".

Jean Lowerison, writing in the San Diego Metropolitan, said: "Caine and Law are terrific together, verbally circling each other like panthers ready to pounce. And though some have complained that 'Sleuth' is all words, I say, 'Yes, isn't it wonderful?' "

Soundtrack

Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle is a Scottish musician and film score composer. A longtime collaborator of actor/director Kenneth Branagh, Doyle is known for his work scoring such critically acclaimed films as Henry V , Sense and Sensibility , Hamlet , and Gosford Park , as well as noteworthy blockbusters as Harry...

 is the composer and it is performed by the London Symphony Orchestra
London Symphony Orchestra
The London Symphony Orchestra is a major orchestra of the United Kingdom, as well as one of the best-known orchestras in the world. Since 1982, the LSO has been based in London's Barbican Centre.-History:...

. The soundtrack is produced by Varèse Sarabande
Varèse Sarabande
Varèse Sarabande is an American record label, distributed by Universal Music Group, which specializes in film scores and original cast recordings. It aims to reissue rare or unavailable albums as well as newer releases by artists no longer under a contract...

 and was released in October 2007.

Track listing

  1. The Visitor - 2:06
  2. The Ladder - 2:49
  3. You're Now You - 1:26
  4. I'm Not A Hairdresser - 3:28
  5. Black Arrival - 2:22
  6. Milo Tindle - 2:17
  7. I Was Lying - 2:30
  8. Itch Twitch - 2:23
  9. Rat In A Trap - 2:26
  10. One Set All - 2:24
  11. Cobblers - 1:39
  12. Sleuth - 6:05
  13. Too Much Sleuth (Dance Mixes by Patrick Doyle Jr.) - 3:51

The House

"Director Branagh found shooting in the house difficult yet interesting. “The minimalism I found was a great challenge. The elevator was Harold’s idea, so that was there and was a central feature of what we are going to bring to it. And then everything else was drawn from contemporary British architecture, contemporary British artists. The wire figure is by Anthony Gormley, one of our most famous sculptors. Gary Hume
Gary Hume
Gary Stewart Hume is an English artist. His work is strongly identified with the YBA artists who came to prominence in the early-1990s. In 1996, Hume was nominated for the Turner Prize, but lost out to Douglas Gordon. Hume was elected a Royal Academician in 2001.-Life and work:Hume was born in...

 did all the artwork on the walls." Custom designed furniture from Ron Arad
Ron Arad (industrial designer)
Ron Arad is an Israeli industrial designer, artist, and architect.-Biography:Arad attended the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem between 1971–73 and the Architectural Association in London from 1974–79...

 completes the look.

External links

  • Sleuth at Paramount Pictures
    Paramount Pictures
    Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...

     in the UK
    United Kingdom
    The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

     – Official (companion) film site hosting video excerpts of the making of Sleuth (behind the scenes), with commentary by director Kenneth Branagh
    Kenneth Branagh
    Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from Northern Ireland. He is best known for directing and starring in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays including Henry V , Much Ado About Nothing , Hamlet Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from...

    . Accessed March 8, 2008.
  • Sleuth at Sony Pictures Classics
    Sony Pictures Classics
    Sony Pictures Classics is an art-house film division of Sony Pictures Entertainment founded in December 1991 that distributes, produces and acquires specialty films from the United States and around the world. Its co-presidents are Michael Barker and Tom Bernard...

     – Official film site (U.S.
    United States
    The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

    ). Accessed March 8, 2008. Features links to synopsis, trailer, gallery of production photos, biographies for cast (Caine and Law) and crew (Pinter and Branagh), some excerpts from reviews, and showtimes
  • Sleuth Japanese official site, accessed March 16, 2008.
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