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Starring Michael Caine, Jude Law
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
Sleuth (1972) let loose two vicious men whose sense of propriety was, at the very least, limited. Andrew Wyke was landed gentry; Milo Tindle was the immigrant upstart who stole his wife.
A battle of wills ensues in which revenge would be served cold and bitter. Thirty years later, Kenneth Branagh updates the film: soft furnishings have been replaced by cold, steely interiors, and language that was once elegant is now decidedly pithy, when it’s not brutally ugly.
Harold Pinter rewrote the original screenplay and his Sleuth is nothing if not trademark Pinter. Sharp, twisting, circular prose is funny, erudite and mean. He has distilled a 140-minute feature into 87 succinct minutes of malice.
Therein lies the film’s strength and weakness. Received as either Branagh’s bastard child or a wondrous delight for those who revel in the art of language, it polarises audiences. Both are correct. As a remake, it fails miserably.
A conceited affair for luvvie-lovers who wallow in the campery of perplexing, ridiculous protagonists. As a reworking, Pinter and Branagh delight in verbal jousts that start with penis comparison and size, which, as we know, matters.
So who’s screwing who, or are they screwing each other? There’s the question, the pleasure and the pain.
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