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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with WILLIAM HALL
Published:22 November 2007

Michael Caine gets to grips with Jude Law in the remake of thriller Sleuth

Oscars, that’s what it’s all about, Alfies

SLEUTH
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
Certificate 15

I HAVE to declare an interest straight away. As Michael Caine’s authorised biographer I have followed the actor’s career ever since I first met him on location in South Africa on the epic Zulu. So I was rather hoping that the new version of Sleuth would bring him the ultimate prize that has always eluded him – the Oscar for best actor.
Ironically, Caine was nominated for this award in 1972 for his role as Milo, a young man invited into the home of famous detective writer Andrew Wyke (played by Laurence Olivier) at the start of an intricate game of intrigue and suspense.
The author knows his young neighbour is having an affair with his wife, and hatches an elaborate plot to murder him. In the new version, directed by Kenneth Branagh and with a fresh script by Harold Pinter, Caine curiously takes on Olivier’s role, with Jude Law playing Milo. But why? Jude Law came a spectacular cropper trying to reprise Caine as Alfie, and I have to wonder why they just won’t leave well alone.
This time Wyke is dressed in sombre black in the rambling country house which reflects the menacing intentions of its occupant, filled with marble and glass in a subtle mirror of himself – cold, hard, unyielding.
So far so good but in this fiendishly contrived cat-and-mouse drama, the acting, direction and the mighty Pinter’s complex script never achieve the pinnacle of subtlety and tension that marked the original.
Something is missing, and – sorry, Mike – I fear that includes the Oscar next year.

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