Film

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (2003)

Director: Mike Hodges

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Will Graham has changed - or has he? He used to be respected, even feared, around his Southeast London manor, but then he gave up crime for isolation and anonymity in a camper van in Wales, doing odd jobs, minding his own business, lying low. Some of those back home might like him six feet lower, so the one person he communicates with is his kid brother Davey (Rhys-Meyers), whose criminality tends to a pettier, less violent variety than that of Will's former rivals. But when Will's calls get no reply, he returns to investigate. In some ways the plot resembles Get Carter, but where that film leavened its brutality with black humour, the tone here is darker. Together, Hodges' judiciously pared back direction and Trevor Preston's pleasingly terse script create a bluesy urban riff on a certain kind of gangland masculinity - at once homoerotic and homophobic - and its twisted ethics of shame, status, revenge and redemption. With its laconic protagonist beautifully played by Owen, its gallery of credible characters, and a wonderfully sustained subterranean mood, the film calls to mind Jean-Pierre Melville.

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