Review: Sleepless

Even if one wasn't aware that Sleepless is an American remake of a 2011 French film named Sleepless Night (Nuit blanche), it wouldn't take too long for one to be overwhelmed with been there, done that feelings about this Jamie Foxx-headlined actioner. Sleepless in and of itself is not necessarily a bad film - it's solid, but wholly disposable - but because it doesn't do anything to tweak or elevate its derivations, it becomes a pale and listless rendering. Indeed, the fact that it is devoid of energy despite its frenetic pacing is already a sign of its many problems.

The film begins with a nighttime chase down the Las Vegas Strip and ends with a shootout as two masked men killing the occupants of one car and stealing 25 kilos of cocaine. Turns out that the masked men are corrupt cops Vincent Downs (Jamie Foxx) and Sean Cass (rapper T.I.), and they have just made the biggest mistake of their lives. The drugs happen to belong to equally crooked casino owner Stanley Rubino (Dermot Mulroney), who is desperate on retrieving the cocaine since it had been promised to Novak (Scoot McNairy), the terrifyingly vicious son of a local mob boss who won't exactly be turning cartwheels at potentially having to explain this screw-up to his dad. Everyone is answerable to someone higher up in the food chain so to save his hide, Rubino kidnaps Vincent's 16-year-old son (Octavius J. Johnson) and holds him hostage until Vincent can return with the drugs.

Easier said than done since Vincent is being doggedly pursued by Internal Affairs investigator Jennifer Bryant (Michelle Monaghan, who overdoes the ball-busting bit a hair too much), who knows in her gut that Vincent is a dirty cop and makes his mission to retrieve his son even more difficult by getting a hold of the drugs that Vincent stashed in the men's bathroom of Rubino's casino and moving them elsewhere. In between fielding calls from his nagging ex-wife (Gabrielle Union) about his failure as a father, Vincent must find away to dodge Bryant and the Feds as well as Rubino and Novak's various henchmen in order to save his son.

The action scenes are competently executed, though they will remind you of other similarly staged, more entertaining ones. The opening chase is a poor man's mash-up of Triple 9's more stylish introduction as well as Jason Bourne's climactic finale; the kitchen fight was more tightly done in last summer's Jack Reacher: Never Go Back; strong shades of the Taken franchise are reflected in the father going through hordes of anonymous hitmen to save his child; and confining the majority of the action in a single setting is right out of the Die Hard playbook. The problem isn't that Sleepless is derivative - one can firmly argue that all films are derivations - but that it brings absolutely nothing new to the mix. John Wick, for example, takes a story that has been done many times before - a man seeking revenge - and introduces elements as well as tremendously choreographed fight scenes that refresh the tale and invigorate the genre.

The monotonous atmosphere extends to Baran Bo Odar's direction, which is lax and unimaginative, as well as Foxx's performance, which is both strenuous and half-hearted.

Sleepless

Directed by: Baran Bo Odar

Written by: Andrea Berloff; based on the screenplay Nuit Blanche by Frédéric Jardin, Nicolas Saada, Olivier Douyère

Starring: Jamie Foxx, Michelle Monaghan, Dermot Mulroney, T.I., David Harbour, Scoot McNairy, Gabrielle Union, Octavius J. Johnson