 |
| No one will let Sam Neill lie in Sleeping Dogs |
wife's infidelity, who attempts to withdraw from society on an isolated island. He is set up as a dupe by his neighbors who are in the resistance fighting the government. The politics seems stuck in the 1960s, the source novel was published in 1971, but Donaldson's handling of suspense and action sequences move things along. The acting is uneven, but it is always welcome to see Warren Oates; here, as a dog of war.
Davidson's most distinctive films are portraits of besieged masculinity: Smash Palace, The Bounty, No Way Out and The Bank Job. They portray men unable to cope with the structures and strictures of society who inevitably are drawn to a more natural or atavistic way of life. Even in Cocktail, an empty vessel, this is evident. The friendship and rivalry between Bryan Brown and Tom Cruise is not all that different than the one between Smith and his erstwhile best bud, Bull in Sleeping Dogs.
The romantic scenes flounder, particularly a bicycle built for two sequence with Smith and his wife that veers too close to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It is signifigant that the wife is in the driver's seat. Donaldson would go on to more interestingly explore post-feminist tensions in Smash Palace. Nevertheless, Sleeping Dogs is an extremely watchable debut.
No comments:
Post a Comment