THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 19, 1996 TAG: 9610190049
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie Review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: 59 lines
``SLEEPERS,'' WITH an awesome group of major stars in small roles, is a genuine ``feel bad'' movie.
Its taut storytelling coupled with a series of dour and steadfastly unshowy performances may not be enough to make up for its ambiguous moral traumas.
It is the second movie in a week (after ``The Chamber) that asks us to be tolerant, and even supportive, of murderers. A questionable message is being sent that some murders are justified, and consequently should be excused.
The message, in ``Sleepers,'' is not forced upon us. If anything, the film is so relentlessly low-key that it seems distant. Director Barry Levinson seems to say: ``Here's our story. Take it or leave it.''
Part one of the film opens in 1966 and chronicles the coming-of-age of four boys in the Hell's Kitchen section of New York. They're mischievous lads who hang out with both the parish priest (Robert De Niro) and the local Mafia boss King Benny (Vittorio Gassman). When one of their pranks critically injures an innocent man, they end up in a reform school - a hell hole of torture and dehumanizing shame.
They are regularly sodomized by inhuman guards, led by sneering baby-faced Kevin Bacon.
Part two begins in 1981, when the boys have grown to men and take revenge on the guard who seemingly ruined their lives. Two of them have grown up to become petty criminals and killers. When these two murder the guard, the other two (a lawyer played by Brad Pitt and a newspaperman played by Jason Patric) stage an elaborate courtroom scheme to get them off.
The film asks us to seriously ponder its moral dilemma. Ultimately, it begs us to side with the killers rather than the sodomizers. What a choice! Can we abstain, please?
The material itself comes to the screen with a tainted background. Novelist Lorenzo Carcaterra continues to claim that it is based on truth, although researchers can find no evidence.
Brad Pitt fans will be dismayed that he comes into the film only briefly, and late.
Dustin Hoffman does another of his fumbling, mumbling readings as an alcoholic lawyer.
De Niro, who crosses over into both halves of the film, is the priest who faces the movie's most head-on moral dilemma - whether to lie under oath in order to save two of his boys. He, like everyone else, handles this trauma with a kind of stone-faced detachment that may cause the audience to wonder ``Hey, if it doesn't bother them, why should I get involved?'' ILLUSTRATION: MOVIE REVIEW
``Sleepers''
Cast: Brad Pitt, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Bacon,
Jason Patric, Minnie Driver, Vittorio Gassman, Billy Crudup, Joe
Perrino, Brad Renfro, Bruno Kirby
Director and Writer: Barry Levinson, based on the novel by
Lorenzo Carcaterra
Music: John Williams
MPAA rating: R (graphic violence, sexual abuse, language)
Mal's rating: **1/2 by CNB