Review of Sleuth (2007) by Jamie M — 02 Nov 2010

I came into this movie quite skeptical. After all, the original film was quite good, but its goodness was based on its surprises. Ergo, I reasoned, the same story would fail to surprise me and consequently fail to be good. But that reasoning underestimates the abilities of Harold Pinter, he of the pregnant pause, one of the best playwrights of the twentieth century. Pinter re-worked the script and made it his own, and the new Sleuth surpasses the old. Wyke goes from a rather dangerous eccentric to a sadistic psychopath, and Tindle goes from a handsome though quick-witted playboy to a bisexual male whore. And these interesting changes say nothing about the moments in between, the actors who fill the silence with sharp characterizations or mesmerizing stillness.

The film does suffer from an almost-too-busy set design, and at the end of the day, while this may seem like a contradiction, there truly is only so much even a writer as skilled as Pinter can do with this material.

Overall, this is worth an hour and a half of your time, especially if you saw the original.