Sleeping Dogs | Film Review

Roy (Russell Crowe), a former police detective suffering with memory problems, tries to solve a murder that he can't remember.

The premise of this film was one that could go either way - it could either be really great or really bad. But because of the great cast attached, I was hopeful for the former!

Unfortunately, while I wouldn't say the film was really bad, it could have been so much better!

I found the present-day story so much more interesting than the past story told in flashbacks. Of course these flashbacks were necessary to fully explain the secrets behind the murder, but for me they didn't work because the film never really made us care about the backstory.

In addition to that, some of the flashback portions were way too long, especially considering the film is less than 2 hours long. 

The story itself is slow and can get a bit boring at times, especially if you don't care about the characters from the offset.

There's a lot you can do with an amnesiac protagonist (see Memento), but it felt like the film didn't really lean into this and just used it as a plot device without going deeper into the ways this could be explored.

Honestly, I would say that the only really interesting parts of this movie, when I was truly invested in the story, were the first 10 minutes and the last 10 minutes.

There is an interesting twist, but considering how slow the rest of the movie was, this could also have been done a lot better.

Overall, this was just a bit disappointing. I get where the filmmakers were going with it, and I actually do like the story as a complete piece, but the middle of the film was so slow and boring that it didn't really feel worth watching.

4/10