Sleepers

Sleepers is about righteous revenge, but not with the blessing of the court as in "A Time to Kill". The first part of the film takes place in Hell's Kitchen, NY, in the 60s, where four good friends, Shakes, Michael, Tommy and John, grow up with their dreams intact. Those dreams are shattered when a boyish prank inadvertently turns into bloody seriousness. The four boys are sentenced to spend a year at the Wilkinson Home for Boys for young offenders. Childhood is over, for they are tortured, raped and humiliated by the sadistic and paedophile guard Nokes and his equally twisted colleagues. The film shows only just enough for you to take the boys' nightmare home to bed with you!

Twelve years later Tommy and John kill their old tormentor Nokes after a chance meeting in a bar. The chance of the two hardened criminals going free is zero, until the killing becomes part of a larger act of revenge. For Michael and Shakes, unlike Tommy and John, have done well in the world. They have become a lawyer and a journalist respectively, and Michael immediately volunteers as prosecutor in the case. The drunken, washed-up Danny Snyder becomes the defence lawyer, so the case seems almost lost in advance, but Michael, Shakes and their friends in Hell's Kitchen, among them the godfather King Benny and Father Bobby, have a plan that is hidden from the public.

Without the public's knowledge, the friends get even with the men who stole their childhood and discredit the boys' home.

Sleepers is a gripping film about solidarity and deliverance through revenge. As the screenplay stands, the film cannot help but come across as two rather separate parts. Had the film been a little longer, an intermission in between would have been appropriate, for it is hard to identify the little boys with the grown men they suddenly become. Despite its length, Sleepers is constantly gripping and entertaining, but that it is supposedly based on a true story is something I find a little hard to believe.