I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

High with the same menacing swagger that characterised Gangster No. 1, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead reunites Croupier director Hodges with Clive Owen, here playing a bearded hermit retired from the ‘scene’. When his coke-dabbling, skirt-chasing younger brother (Meyers) cuts his own throat having been raped down an alley by – wouldn’t you know it – Malcolm McDowell, the scene is set for his elder sibling to seek horrible revenge. Predictably, Mr. Owen hooks up with several old friends – including old pal Jamie Foreman and former lover Charlotte Rampling (I know she gets around, but jeez...) – before he hits a Cinderella moment when he polishes off his gun, gets suited and booted and hunts McDowell down like a dog.   
Somewhat unpredictably, however, our avenging former thug consults a psychologist (huh?) who kindly explains the trauma and physiology of male rape for the benefit of the audience without recourse to diagrams (just about).
Steeped in retro-gangster iconography and distinguished by arthouse ellipticism, I’ll Sleep… is considerably more accomplished and cerebral than most of the milieu, but no less brutal and nasty for it. Listening to the sour, discordant score, one must assume that was precisely the point, but the film’s latent homophobia is rather unwholesome, as is its nihilistic denouement.
Still, as stone-cold underworld neo-noirs with a Deliverance bent go, you could do a lot worse.

Running Time 104mins. Cert 18. Opens April 1st.