re:mote voices

Title: I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
Cast: Clive Owen, Charlotte Rampling, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Malcolm McDowell, Jamie Foreman, Ken Stott, Sylvia Syms
Director: Mike Hodges

Director Mike Hodges returns from the relative success of his work with Clive Owen on The Croupier, to see Owen again in the lead role with the noir I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead. Owen takes the role of Will Graham, a possibly reformed hard man, who has left London and all connections to his past behind him. Graham moves from job to job, living rough in a van, a far cry from one of the most feared men of his generation. However, just as he is preparing to leave the country, he has some kind of premonition. His inability to get hold of his brother on the phone leads him spiralling back to London, and the discovery of his brother Davey Graham’s suicide. Davey had been a man about town, dealing enough drugs to make a bit of money, and never lacking in a bit of female company – so it is a mystery to all why he would kill himself. Will’s return can only bring about bad things, the former members of his gang making it clear that where Will goes death will follow, regardless of how much he thinks he has changed. From the rising tensions of rival gangsters it is clear that things are going to go badly.

The direction and Owen’s part provide a gravity, a centring to the film – Owen comes across as dark and brooding, wild hair, a straggly beard and a reluctance to fill the air with his voice for the sake of it, surrounded by those who seem only to happy to hear themselves speak. The atmosphere is emphasised and complimented well throughout by the soundtrack provided by Simon Fisher Turner, at times providing a definite abstractness which conjures emotions stronger than the run of the mill orchestrations too many settle for. The only weakness perhaps in I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead would seem to be the ending, the ambiguity and openness of it – particularly the way a particular scene was left, I couldn’t decide whether someone was still breathing. The film seemed to building threads of threat and potential, but the end doesn’t entirely resolve this, which causes an element of dissatisfaction. Though perhaps one that shouldn’t detract from the whole.