Sleepers (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Whatever you do to the least of my brethren...

you do to me."

~(Father Bobby)~

 

"Life is risk."

~(King Benny)~

 

"There's always gonna be more bad guys than good, Mikey."

~(Assistant District Attorney)~

 

"Court is for uptown people with suits, money...

lawyers with three names.

If you got cash, you can buy court justice.

But on the street, justice has no price. 

She's blind where the judge sits, but she's not blind out here.

Out here, the bitch got eyes."

~(Fat Man)~

 

 

 

"Sleepers"

is

a street name for anyone who spent time in a juvenile facility.

 

 

Sleepers (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Sleepers is a 1996 American legal drama film written, produced, and directed by Barry Levinson, and based on Lorenzo Carcaterra's 1995 novel of the same name.

Plot

Lorenzo "Shakes" Carcaterra, Thomas "Tommy" Marcano, Michael Sullivan, and John Reilly are childhood friends in Hell's Kitchen, New York City in the mid-1960s. The local priest, Father Bobby Carillo (De Niro), plays an important part in their lives and keeps an eye on them. However, early on they start running small errands for a local gangster, King Benny.

In the summer of 1967, their lives take a turn when they nearly kill a man after pulling a prank on a hot dog vendor. As punishment, the older three are sentenced to serve 12 to 18 months at the Wilkinson Home for Boys in Upstate New York while Lorenzo is sentenced to 6 to 12 months. There, the boys are systematically abused and raped by guards Sean Nokes, Henry Addison, Ralph Ferguson, and Adam Styler.

Fourteen years later, John and Tommy kill Nokes in a Hell's Kitchen pub in front of witnesses.

 

***

 

 You can basically divide this movie into two parts:

 

1st semester which described their childhood upbringing,

and

2nd semester which gives you an insight into their lives as adult.
 

I chose to include in my blog only the plot up until the confrontation in the Hell's Kitchen pub as the rest of the movie I found to be  mostly the work of fiction than anything that might actually happen in real life.  Just too many people from different walks of life involved in that conspiracy from that point on to be believable.

 

One thing I like about watching movies alone I rent from Netflix, besides watching them in closed caption, is checking out the bonus features afterward. 

 

With this movie,
SLEEPERS,
it was the production notes I found most enlightening which I want to share with you as followed.

 

PRODUCTION NOTES

 

"Sleepers' is an American tragedy," writer/director Barry Levinson says about the story he adapted from Lorenzo Carcaterra's novel of that same title.

 

"Often events occur early in our lives that affect everything that comes after.  A small event can alter your destiny forever."

 

"These boys came from Hell's Kitchen, a neighborhood that basically dealt with its own problems internally," Levinson explains.

 

"So years later, when confronted with someone who represented the suffering of their reform-school past, they took retribution into their own hands."

 

"On the surface, it's easy to question the morality of their actions.  but, given those circumstances, who's to say what any of us might do?"

 

"Sleepers" also focuses on the judicial system and how it will function when it is manipulated.

 

The four boys, after reaching manhood, are unable to exact pitiless revenge on the guards who tried to destroy them.

 

"All those years later, their hatred of the guards  had not gone away," Levinson says.  Their revenge was street justice, even though it used the judicial system." 

 

Levinson confronts this disturbing clash between justice and morality while also exploring themes from his previous projects-the bonds of friendship.

 

In "Diner," childhood friends grew to manhood, but struggled to maintain the ties of their playful adolescence.

 

In "Good Morning, Vietnam," an American disc jockey befriended a young Vietnamese boy while lifting the spirits of soldiers who were wrestling with the realities of war.

 

"Rain Man" probed the friendship between an idiot-savant and his worldly younger brothers as they traveled crossed-country.

 

"I've written a lot about friendship, the dynamics of tight-knit groups and how those friendships endure," Levinson says.

 

"And although I grew up in a very different environment, when I read Lorenzo's book, I found it very compatible to the kind of work I might do.

 

"It also deals with disturbing issues that aren't easily resolved.  At its center is a moral conundrum that isn't easily forgotten."

 

"Sleepers"describes four boys who lost their innocence at a time - the mid-1960s - when America was losing its own innocence.

 

Levinson says, "We all start out as children, as innocents.  You see children, they're struggling to learn.  They evolve.  And you say, 'What causes us to be who we are?  Family, community, nation?"'

 

"Some people excel and others are haunted by events for the rest of their lives."

 

***

 

Plan to add experiences from my own life later.  Don't expect it to be a traumating event anywhere close to what these young boys suffered.

 

Quite the opposite.