Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey S. Karten
Sony Pictures Classics
Grade: B
Directed by: Kenneth Branagh
Written By: Harold Pinter from Anthony Shaffer's play
Cast: Jude Law, Michael Caine
Screened at: Sony, NYC, 9/11/07
Opens: October 12, 2007

Tennis is a great sport, especially for athletic types who want to shine as individuals without being part of a group. Two people face off against each other following the rules, each knowing that all they’re doing is playing a game. For those who are not athletic and may not even care to watch the US Open, there are games of wit, with the competitors sometimes knowing they’re playing, at other times not. Kenneth Branagh’s "Sleuth," a reworking of Joseph Mankiewicz’s 1972 film by the same name, features two such people, one far more adept with the English language than the other and with greater physical resources at his command, while the other player, financially strapped and lacking in the richer man’s soignee, has youth on his side. They play three sets against each other, best two out of three taking the match. And the stakes are high, whether the trophy is a young woman torn between the youthful lover and her famous, fabulously rich husband, or the very life of the losing gentleman.

"Sleuth," filmed from Anthony Shaffer’s play with a screenplay by arguably the greatest living playwright in the English language, Harold Pinter, is a two-man show which could be entitled "Humiliation," in that each of the two characters must defend his honor, each ready to take revenge if abased by the other. Michael Caine, who performed in the role of the younger man in 1972 while Laurence Olivier took on the role of his opponent, this time shines as the overly confident multi-millionaire living in a mansion among a starkly minimalist, ultra-contemporary design. His persona, Andrew Wyke, is a crime novelist whose popularity garnered him his wealth and presumably a trophy wife. Jude Law in the role of Milo Tindle, on the other hand, is an unemployed actor whose body, rather than his mind, must have attracted Wyke’s wife, Maggie, to seek a divorce–bad move for Maggie and for the two men in her life as well.

"Sleuth" is to be enjoyed more for its language–featuring the famous Pinteresque pauses, each of which bears meaning as important as the words–than for the story or even Michael Caine’s sharp performance. The most amusing segment is the opening third, the first of the three-set verbal tennis match a it were, as Wyke regularly puts down the lower social class of his visitor. He calls Milo "some sort of half breed" for being partly Italian (with a name, sniffs Wyke, that sounds Hungarian), refers to the car which Milo parks outside the entrance as the smaller one (when compared to Wyke’s), and alludes to the actor as coming from a long line of hair dressers.

If the definition of theater is two or more people locked in conflict to which they cannot escape, "Sleuth" is clearly theater. The psychological battle increases in tension in much the style of George and Martha in Edward Albee’s "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf," which features an older, wiser couple’s regularly trashing the two younger guests in their home.

Physically, the action centers on a proposal by Wyth that Tindle break into Wyth’s home through the skylight, steal the one million-pound-sterling necklace that Wyth bought for his wife, and fence the goods in Amsterdam for 80% of their true value while Wyth collects the insurance.

Wyth’s fabulous house could be considered the third character, filled with alarm systems, surveillance cameras, ladders that descend electrically, a fireplace that roars at the touch of a remote button, walls that open up with another such touch. The set design, housed in the St. Margarets section of London’s Twickenham studios, is elegant, a perfect mirror of its inhabitant’s style.

Short as the film is–just eighty-eight minutes, which represents a considerable cut from the 1972 version–its tale becomes less inventive as it moves along, particularly when the delightful use of the English language steps aside to make room for vulgar physical action. As good an actor as Jude Law is, he seems uncomfortable next to one of the greats, though photographer Haris Zambarloukos tries his best to give them equal shots with extreme close-ups. The final scene is the least satisfying of all, an ending that oversimplifies and belies most of what has so stylishly gone on before.

Rated R. 88 minutes © 2007 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online