Sleepless is a remake of the French film, Sleepless Night, by Frédéric Jardin. Unfortunately, this is not that movie. Sleepless is meant to be a stylish crime thriller in the backdrop of Las Vegas with Jamie Foxx playing vice LVMPD policemen Vincent Downs. Along with his partner played by Tip ‘T.I.’ Harris, they get in over their heads as they rip off a drug dealer. The problem being the drugs they stole belong to someone who’s a pretty big deal. As a result, Vincent needs to return the stolen cocaine to get his son back who has been kidnapped. All of this while at the same time dealing with family issues of his estranged wife and Internal Affairs looking to bust him for corruption.
The style of the film gives off a Taken meets Collateral vibe. To compare to those two films would almost be an insult as those films have slick action worth watching. However, this movie is like a cheap VOD trying to take cues from Die Hard and other cop films. The fight sequences, which really would be the only reason to watch with a plot like this, is boring from start to finish. At times Jamie Foxx looks like a competent officer that can pull this off, then in another scene just looks like an average person trying to fight his way out of a scenario. He has a harder time fending off hired thugs then other police officers who I imagine have had the same hand to hand training. Everything in the film screams generic. There isn’t a surprise throughout the whole film other than maybe the ending which alludes to the possibility of being a sequel. I’m not sure if it’s merely following the story that it’s adapting, but at no time during the film does it feel like this is just the start of things, other than to nicely tie up loose ends to this cliché riddled film. To make things worse the story is unconvincing as the script barely has anything to say. Jamie Foxx tries his best to make the character a smooth capable operator, but can’t muster enough through weak dialogue and bad action scenes. Other great actors in this film also give it a go, but the simplistic choreography, cheesy dialogue and poor decision making have me questioning how competent everyone in the story is and why has it taken this long for things to fall apart.
This film could easily be picked apart from awkward pacing to unnecessary violence to inconsistent fight scenes to it being pointlessly set in Las Vegas. If you are fan in this genre you have already watched this paint by the numbers, only this is just above VOD quality. Meirda.
MPAA Rating: R
Running time: 1 hr 35 min
Director: Baran bo Odar
Screenplay: Andrea Berloff
Cast: Jamie Foxx, Michelle Monaghan, Dermot Mulroney, David Harbour, Scoot McNairy, T.I., and Gabrielle Union
Producers: Roy Lee and Adam Stone
Music: Michael Kamm
Cinematography: Mihai Malaimare Jr.