Sleuth

The Age

Friday March 7, 2008

Philippa Hawker

Sleuth

2/5 (88 mins) M

Anthony Shaffer's 1970 play, a stylised tale of manipulation, mystery and masculinity, was filmed in 1972 with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine in the leads. Thirty-five years on, Harold Pinter has written a new adaptation, Kenneth Branagh directs, and Caine takes the Olivier role. He is an elderly crime writer, Andrew Wyke, who has a rendezvous at his elaborately embellished country home with his wife's lover, Milo Tindle (Jude Law). Tindle has come to persuade Wyke to agree to a divorce but finds, however, that Wyke has other plans. An elaborate game of cat and mouse ensues. Pinter's adaptation develops the homoerotic possibilities of the original, and Caine and Law tackle their roles with relish but there is something fairly pointless and mechanical about the sum total of their efforts. Branagh's direction, if it's not Wyke's mansion, has been tricked out with all kinds of surveillance devices but they're of little use to him or the film: the surprises and twists of the Sleuth carry little weight and there's a lack of either tension or a sense of play. -- PHILIPPA HAWKER

© 2008 The Age

Back to News Index | Back to Home