Sleepers (film)
| Sleepers | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Barry Levinson |
| Written by | Barry Levinson based on the novel by Lorenzo Carcaterra |
| Produced by | Barry Levinson Steve Golin |
| Starring | Kevin Bacon Billy Crudup Robert De Niro Minnie Driver Ron Eldard Vittorio Gassman Dustin Hoffman Jason Patric Brad Pitt |
| Edited by | Stu Linder |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. (USA) PolyGram Filmed Entertainment (UK, France, Germany) |
Release dates | October 18, 1996 |
Running time | 147 min |
| Language | English |
Sleepers is a 1996 film based on Lorenzo Carcaterra's novel of the same name.
Synopsis
Lorenzo "Shakes" Carcaterra, Thomas "Tommy" Marcano, Michael Sullivan and John Reilly are four childhood friends (played by Joseph Perrino, Jonathan Tucker, Brad Renfro and Geoffrey Wigdor) living in Hell's Kitchen, New York City in the mid-1960s. The four friends work for local gangster King Benny (Vittorio Gassman) who has them deliver bribe money to the local police precinct on a weekly basis. When King Benny and their families are not watching them, they are often under the eye of Father Bobby (Robert De Niro), himself a one-time delinquent.
On a hot summer day, the boys play a prank on a Greek hot dog vendor, stealing his cart. A near-fatal accident occurs which results in the hot dog cart falling down a subway stairwell, crushing a man named James Caldwell (Don Hewitt) at the bottom of the stairs, almost killing him. Found guilty of reckless endangerment, the four boys are sentenced to serve time at the Wilkinson Home for Boys in upstate New York.
At Wilkinson, the boys are systemmatically beaten, abused and raped by head guards Sean Nokes, Henry Addison, Adam Styler and Ralph Ferguson (Kevin Bacon, Jeffrey Donovan, Lennie Loftin and Terry Kinney). When the guards put together a team of inmates to play against them in a touch football game, the four Hell's Kitchen boys are selected and decide to use the game as an opportunity to get back at the guards physically. They ask inmate Rizzo (Eugene Byrd), whose reputation is such the guards leave him alone, to lead the team in beating the guards during the game. Rizzo agrees, and the inmates win the game, but the guards toss them into solitary confinement and Addison beats Rizzo to death.
The boys are eventually released, but are never the same, and gradually drift apart.
In 1981, John and Tommy (as adults, played by Ron Eldard and Billy Crudup), now gangsters, come across Sean Nokes in a Hell's Kitchen pub. They murder Nokes in front of several witnesses. Shakes and Mike (as adults, played by Jason Patric and Brad Pitt) enlist the help of their childhood friend Carol Martinez (Minnie Driver), Father Bobby, a local cop named Nick Davenport (Daniel Mastrogiorgio), King Benny, and a struggling lawyer, Danny Snyder (Dustin Hoffman) to guarantee their friends' acquittal and expose the abuses committed at Wilkinson's.
Mike, by now an assistant District Attorney, arranges to be assigned to the case, secretly intending to lose as a means of getting revenge on the Wilkinson home. Shakes is a low-level editorial assistant at the New York Times, and uses contacts to gather background information on the guards at Wilkinson's. Carol is a social worker, and uses her office to access files on Wilkinson's.
Styler, now a policeman, is arrested by the NYPD's Internal Affairs division, led by Davenport, for murdering a drug dealer. Addison is murdered by black gangsters led by Rizzo's older brother, Little Caesar (Wendell Pierce). In the courtroom, Ferguson, now a social worker in Long Island, is discredited as a character witness as the abuses perpetrated by the guards are exposed in open court.
To clinch the case, after a long talk with Shakes and Carol, Father Bobby lies on the stand about where John and Tommy were the night of the shooting. Father Bobby claims they were at Madison Square Garden at a Knicks game with him and as a result, they are found not guilty. Ticket stubs to the game, surreptitiously supplied by King Benny, help convince the jury).
From there, the boys are reunited one last time for a party at a Hell's Kitchen bar. In a brief epilogue, it's revealed that after the trial, John and Tommy return to their lives of crime, and die a few years later.
Mikey, blacklisted by the D.A.'s office for losing an apparently open-and-shut case, resigns and stops practicing law. He eventually moves to England to live alone, working as a part-time carpenter. Shakes remains in the city and works his way up through the ranks of journalism. Carol continues to live in Hell's Kitchen, where she raises her son, John Thomas Michael Martinez, nicknamed "Shakes".
Truth versus fiction
While Carcaterra claims that the book is a true story, critics have asserted that the majority of it, if not all of it, is fictional:
- No record has been found for any such trial even remotely similar to the one depicted in the film.
- Carcaterra's school records show that between the ages of 5 and 14, he only missed a total of three weeks worth of school; according to the book, he was incarcerated in a juvenile detention center for six months when he was 13, and he would not have had any school records for this period.
- No records exist for any of the other three boys mentioned in the book.
- No murders, as described in the book's closing chapters, took place on the dates specified.
Carcaterra states that everything he wrote was true, but that he did change names, dates and places to protect the identities of those involved, making it difficult to independently verify the facts. As an example, he states that he moved the location of the trial to Manhattan. If the trial had taken place in another jurisdiction, such as a different borough of New York or in New Jersey, that would not be reflected in the Manhattan district attorney and court records. The book also explains that school records were altered to show that the boys were in school during the time they were actually in Wilkinson.
The version of the film shown on cable television, although uncut, contains disclaimers before the end credits stating that the New York youth correctional authorities and the Manhattan district attorney's office deny that the events in the film took place. A final title card states that Carcaterra stands by his story.
Cast
| Role | Actor |
|---|---|
| Sean Nokes | Kevin Bacon |
| Tommy Marcano | Billy Crudup |
| Father Bobby | Robert De Niro |
| King Benny | Vittorio Gassman |
| Carol Martinez | Minnie Driver |
| Danny Snyder | Dustin Hoffman |
| John Reilly | Ron Eldard |
| Lorenzo "Shakes" Carcaterra | Jason Patric |
| Michael Sullivan | Brad Pitt |
| Ralph Ferguson | Terry Kinney |
| Young Shakes | Joseph Perrino |
| Young John | Geoffrey Wigdor |
| Young Michael | Brad Renfro |
| Young Tommy | Jonathan Tucker |
See also
- List of books portraying paedophilia or sexual abuse of minors
- List of films portraying paedophilia or sexual abuse of minors
