Sleepless Night

Sleepless Night is a French thriller about a cop who may be corrupt, who may be stupid, and who must be indestructible. Unfortunately, what he is not is a fully-realized character.

Here's the setup: French action star Tomer Sisley (Well, he was born in Berlin, but his movies are French. It's the EU, people!) is a cop who has stolen a bag of narcotics. The original owner wants it returned, so he's kidnapped Sisley's son. Now, all Sisley has to do is rescue his son, evade the Internal Affairs officers who are hunting for him, and get home safely. Where must he accomplish these tasks in one (you guessed it – sleepless) night? A nightclub so loud, so labyrinthine, so crazy that nobody runs when various good – or – evildoers pull guns and start shooting.

That's fun stuff, and it offers well-staged fights, plenty of twists and turns, and almost everything one could ask for from a film entitled Sleepless Night. But there's a hollowness at the center of Sleepless Night that saps the film of its energy: at no time does the viewer feel he or she is watching real people. The cop is just that – a cop of questionable integrity who turns into a fighting machine when his son is threatened. The thugs are just thugs, the kingpins kingpins, and the child in distress just a child in distress. One can't shake the feeling that this film could have been more, had it dared to give us people rather than notecards.

Ah, well. They can't all be winners.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Captain America: The Winter Soldier fuses the paranoid political thriller and the superhero action showcase. That it does so well, in part and in total, is a remarkable achievement.

Here's the setup: Cap & Black Widow (Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson) are the two most attractive people in government service. They're also a superhero team that flies around the world doing secret missions for SHIELD. SHIELD is basically the DHS, but competent, international, and much better funded. SHIELD, however, may have a hidden agenda. Will Cap & BW sort things out in time?

Well, yeah, of course they will. That's not the point. The point is how well the film tells their story. Robert Redford (as, basically the Secretary of SHIELD) and Samuel L. Jackson (as himself) carry the political thriller aspects of the picture with aplomb. Evans & Johansson, who team up with Anthony Mackie (of the criminally underrated Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) to battle Frank Grillo (Warrior) and Sebastian Stan (Black Swan), make a great action duo. They combine athleticism with real acting chops, selling both their battles and their dialogue.

That said, the real star here is the story. It's like a finely tuned machine, shifting from character beats to action set-pieces and back again smoothly and gracefully. It parcels out information at just the right pace to allow us to keep up, and it hangs together well enough that it still makes sense a few days later.

In short, this is a successful motion picture. It clips along briskly, it's well engineered, it involved me in the lives of its characters, and it kept me engaged the entire time.

But that isn't what I'll remember about it.

I'll remember two particular moments (the second of which is a spoiler). The first is minor piece of set-dressing. When Redford's character opens his kitchen refrigerator, the astute viewer will notice that he stocks his fridge with Newman's Own marinara sauce. That's a nice touch. The second is the most powerful scene in the movie. Villain Frank Grillo, all muscles, veins, and menace, is pointing his gun at the back of a computer technician's head, commanding him to enter a code that will make bad things happen. The technician, whom I'm guessing is played by Aaron Himelstein, squirms with terror. Nevertheless, he refuses to enter the code. That's fine, but the part that sells the moment is that he doesn't refuse nobly, standing up to the meanie and telling him to get stuffed. He practically squeaks his refusal, trying to melt into his chair and probably $#!^ting his pants. It's the bravest damn thing I've seen in a movie all year.


Well done.