52/100
Missed opportunity by the marketing folks, who somehow failed to use the obvious tagline: They wouldn't let him lie. Actually, questions about what kind of man Smith was before Sleeping Dogs awakens begins occupy a troublesome void at the film's center—one that I strongly suspect isn't present in C.K. Stead's source novel, as interior monologue would be the ideal means of exploration. Sam Neill (R.I.P.), fine actor that he was even at the outset of his long career, declines to signpost what Smith is thinking at every moment, but this integrity has a downside; it's not clear to me, for example, whether Smith's marriage failed specifically because his wife was repelled by his apathetic inaction in the face of growing governmental tyranny and so embarked upon an affair with someone who gave a shit. I think that's what we're eventually meant to understand, if only because it makes the movie far more interesting. Early shots of Smith standing around watching the TV-news exposition along with us don't do much to establish him as a stick-my-neck-out-for-nobody kind of guy, though, and much of Sleeping Dogs unfolds like your basic uncomplicated wrong-man thriller, Smith having been chosen at a patsy simply due to his having picked the wrong small island on which to go live as a quasi-hermit. A landmark New Zealand film (apparently the country's very first 35mm feature, which seems insane even given that co-productions don't count toward that status) but it seemed mostly unremarkable to me on its own merits, peaking with Warren Oates' brief appearance as a U.S. Army Colonel who just wants to party and doesn't appreciate Smith's downer questions about how one lives with killing others for a cause. As usual, I assume it's an adaptation issue, especially considering such novelistic details as Smith having a dog foisted on him by the dude who rents the island (which has no bearing on anything and would never have been written into a screenplay from scratch). "What's her name?" "I don't know. She's your dog."