I’m no stranger to film noir or Russel Crowe, but when you get the two of them together, you have me intrigued. Crowe’s career has long past the days when he was getting nominated for Academy Awards, or if he wasn’t, he should have been.  He’s had some duds in his career lately like The Pope’s Exorcist, but he’s been doing some good work in films like Land of Bad in a supporting role. In his latest film Sleeping Dogs, he’s once again the lead character, but he is doing solid work once again.

Homicide Detective Roy Freeman (Russell Crowe) wakes up from a coma without a memory of his past. As he starts to talk to people when gets out of the hospital, first a prisoner accused of murder he said he didn’t commit, Isaac Samuel (Pacharo Mzembe) ends up going down a rabbit hole of past memories that don’t make any sense to him. Names start to pop up, and he uses his detective instincts to investigate this case, but he doesn’t know who or what to believe.

This film is such a film noir it takes from others with tropes like the femme fatale, a mystery man who could be the actual killer, and of course the supposed good guy ex-partner. We’ve seen that character plenty of times in film noir. The forgotten memories angle is a classic film noir trope. I’ve seen a bunch over the years. I’m not saying that it’s bad; I’m just saying it’s been done to death before. I can watch film noir any day of the week, though. 

With Crowe being the lead he needs some solid actors in supporting roles to accompany his performance. This movie has a handful of good character performances he could act opposite. The first being the ex-partner, Jimmy Remis played by Tommy Flanagan. He’s great at playing the mysterious or sadistic bad guy but here is more reserved. The second is Karen Gillian as Laura Baines, the femme fatale I mentioned earlier. It’s nice to see her doing something else besides playing Nebula in the Guardians of the Galaxy films and MCU franchise. She is terrific in this role. Her character has the classic dual personality film noir has had in the past. You think she’s one thing and she turns out to be something else. I loved it. Another character that played a part in the story was a mystery man played by Thomas M Wright. He was a little more straightforward once you find out who he’s working for. Martin Czoskas, usually a villain in most of the films he’s in, is not in the movie as much as I’d like but he makes the most of his screen time when he is. This is a solid cast of veteran character actors doing good work.

With all film noir or murder mysteries there are tricks that the director and or writers use to tell their story. Adam Cooper and others use plenty of flashback sequences. Some from the forgotten lost memories of the Crowe character and when he’s reading texts of a book. The film flashes back to a few other characters he’s learned about during his investigation. The dream sequences and flashbacks are very effective in helping tell this story. This was some masterful writing and editing to splice this story together. 

Sleeping Dogs has a lot of twists and turns in it. Cooper and company are able to keep viewers guessing to the very end. The forgotten memory trope has been done to death before but it works quite well here. It makes sense that Crowe signed on to this film. Add in the film noir angle to the story of a detective trying to get to the bottom of a murder and you have a decent little movie. The supporting cast is doing very good work and Gillian is the standout of the bunch. This was a good film that brought me back to when I was watching Humphrey Bogart films as a kid. Those were the good old days.

3 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen