Flak Magazine: Review of I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, 09.03.04

If not for Dutch TV, director Mike Hodges would be much better known to contemporary stateside audiences. His 1998 film Croupier, featuring the tuxedoed Clive Owen performance that shortlisted the actor as the next James Bond, was an Oscar dark horse for both Hodges and Owen. But a Dutch broadcast of the film violated the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences' candidacy rules, and everything Croupier quieted down quickly — the US DVD wasn't released until March of this year.

Croupier's foreshortened life didn't impede Owen's career — he had major roles in Gosford Park and The Bourne Identity, and courtesy of BMW, he worked with a half-dozen or so of the world's top directors. His latest collaboration with Hodges, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, had its American release roughly concurrent with that of his top-billed incarnation of King Arthur, marking a new altitude for the lanky Brit's rising star.

For Hodges, though, the tragic underviewing of Croupier leaves many viewers unequipped to fully appreciate this movie. The director has managed to unite many disparate sets of symbology and story into a harmonious work irrespective of the massive constraints of genre (i.e., British crime film and therefore poorly lit, full of silent stares and made on the cheap) and content (i.e., homosexual rape-unto-suicide, therefore requiring very awkward exposition and performances).

Owen plays Will Graham, who returns home to investigate the death of his brother (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) — a revisitation of Hodges' 1971 breakthrough Get Carter. Will's criminal past is never spelled out, but this very well could have been Owen's Professor from The Bourne Identity after a three-year hiatus (and had Bourne not offed him). Will has taken Croupier's "hang on tightly, let go lightly" mantra to heart; he has detached from society and operates without ID out of a mobile home in logging country.

It was the younger Graham who had been raped, and the rapist is local kingpin Boad (Malcolm McDowell). Boad gives his own reasons for the act, but it's clear that crime's old guard is asserting itself over the cheeky, too-stylish newcomers. (The tagline on Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels is "A disgrace to criminals everywhere;" Boad is the one being referred to.) Before the assault, Meyers plays vanity on wheels, turning petty crime into a designer hobby. His suicide suggests he can't live with the fact that a truer strain of crime exists, one that has emasculated him both by violating him and making him feel frivolous in his chosen profession.

In America, this seems like a fairly straightforward story, something from a "Law & Order: CI" episode. In England, though, the intersection of the cutthroat film market and "Buy British" marketing emboldens this rape with context. It's McDowell, the veteran, informing Meyers, the newcomer, that access to the film marketplace comes at a cost. Meyers can't continue to earn paychecks playing cheeky studs like here and in Bend It Like Beckham; it's veddy un-British. Stateside, Robert DeNiro doesn't have to line up Ashton Kutcher for desecration because film opportunities in the US are beyond bountiful; we live in a culture where even the doorman has a headshot, and the entry fee is essentially the cost of camera rental for a weekend. The rape scene of Dead is Hodges' way of informing the Orlando Bloom generation that if you want to keep a foothold over on the island, you can't stay above the gangster genre that England so loves.

Hodges gives Owen a middle path between his co-stars' histrionics. Will is strong and silent (and strangely hirsute), and his tacit calculation is the very heart of the film. Hodges rewards this neutrality by granting Owen two symbols that have carved out his career: the black-tie uniform (from Croupier) and the luxury car (from BMW's "The Hire" shorts). If rape is a clear attempt to seize power and authority, so is Owen's decision to shower, shave and get dressed for work. Given his curriculum vitae, Owen in a suit and behind the wheel is as much a symbol of virility as a loaded gun.

Hodges' telegram to his market partners is rather clear. He understands that one way to make a mark is the way of Boad — in essence, to yell and stamp with middle fingers flailing, to scream that he is tired of the new, clean-shaven, androgynous caper trend in his genre. But he also understands that the more effective route is to present the collected class and professionalism of Will Graham. Owen's character is Hodges, taking careful stock of what has happened to the world he once knew and acting on the basis of full information. Rather than a brash act of buggery, Hodges makes a coherent statement, and through no coincidence uses Croupier imagery to embolden it. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead smartly tells Hodges' peers that there is a right way to do these kinds of movies, and I'll Sleep … and Croupier are it.

— Andy Stilp (andy.stilp at gmail dot com)