Critic Reviews

It's like "Deathtrap" crossed with "Cribs" as staged by Stanley Kubrick.

Caine, who has never been much for the stage, is a superb screen actor, so good his master classes on acting for the camera are on DVD. Here, dry and clipped, biting and savage, he goes for the kill.

A pretty good movie. It just isn't a very good "Sleuth," exactly.

I think the movie works best if you know the original and have a taste for goofy revisionism.

Despite top-flight acting from Michael Caine and Jude Law, it loses its grip in the third act and let's the air out of what might have been a memorably gripping film.

Sleuth is well acted, and directed by Branagh with chilly, distant ingenuity. It has a certain edge and daring, or more to the point it pretends to.

Language this lethal has all but disappeared from the movies, and it's an unmitigated pleasure to observe Caine and Law attack it with such ferocity. Sleuth is nasty fun.

The 1972 movie was better paced and presented a superior story but this one has its own pleasures. It's an interesting failure - a film that works more successfully as a study of technique and writing than as a motion picture.

While the entire premise of Sleuth is a gimmick, having Michael Caine and Jude Law remake the 1972 adaptation of Anthony Shaffer's Tony Award-winning play heightens the gimmick quotient.

Just when things should be getting exciting and complex, they become repetitive and predictable. Subtext becomes hint becomes statement becomes declaration. For once, Pinter is a little too easy to understand.