Back in 1972, “Sleuth” presented a delightful — that is, delightfully wicked — opportunity to watch a pair of actors swing for the fences. Based on Anthony Shaffer’s ingenious stage play, the movie let Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine go at it hammer and tongs.
That movie, directed in busy fashion by Joseph Mankiewicz, was sheer fun. A new version tries to be something more. That is its fatal flaw.
This time, Shaffer’s play has been adapted and substantially rethought by Harold Pinter, the Nobel Prize-winning author. It sounds like a great match, because Pinter’s stock in trade has been gauging the rhythms and language of people stuck in a room together.
And, for a while, the script is crisp enough, and the casting seems promising. You will recall that “Sleuth” is set in the country home of a successful older writer, Andrew Wyke, who has invited his wife’s lover, a younger actor named Milo Tindle, to visit him.
Michael Caine, who played Milo in 1972, now plays the older man. Milo is played by Jude Law. The two of them embark on a little cat-and-mouse agenda that eventually escalates into something quite alarming.
Some tart, cutting exchanges brighten the early going, even if director Kenneth Branagh seems bent on distracting us with mystifying camera angles and an overabundance of the gleaming set.
In the original, Wyke’s home was crammed with novelty toys and bric-a-brac; here, the place is almost futuristic in its gleaming, soulless surfaces. I suppose this tells us something about the character, but it’s tiresome to look at.
As the movie goes on, Pinter becomes quite blatant about material that was subliminal in the earlier film. He tries to get deep, but the structure and appeal of “Sleuth” is that it’s mechanical. “Sleuth” isn’t about psychology, it’s about play.
Caine is just fine; Law is almost too callow as the hairdresser-slash-actor. In the only other role of note, Alec Cawthorne delivers ably.
Check out the original, though. Among its silly pleasures is seeing the young Caine, a movie actor with a direct style, go up against the incredibly fussy, mischievous Olivier, a man of the theater through and through. Despite new layers of meaning, that kind of tension is nowhere to be found here.
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