Sleepers

I just finished reading Sleepers again, and as usual, it leaves me with a great desire to see the movie. Unfortunately, I KNOW that I'll be disappointed with said movie. Why? you ask. Well, you'd think it would be a pretty good movie. I mean, the plot is gripping and interesting and the movie is jam-packed with starpower. I mean, come on: Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, Brad Renfro, Minnie Driver, Billy Crudup, Brad Pitt, Kevin Bacon AND Ron Eldard (whom I secretly find considerably more lust-worthy than Brad Pitt for reasons still unknown) all in the same movie! Yet the movie fails. The reason for this abysmal failure lies with the time period the movie was filmed in. It was filmed during a time when heads of studios and casting directors alike shared the tragic and mistaken idea that Jason Patric could act. Yes, I know you are all wondering how a misconception of this magnitude could have occured, and I have no easy answers for you. All I know is that for some reason he was given the narrative lead in this movie and he single-handedly causes it to plummet to earth in a ball of flaming wreckage. He's like an enormous black hole of talent, and the rest of the cast must struggle valiantly but ultimately in vain to to avoid being sucked in with him. I simply can't imagine why they chose Jason Patric for that part. What--was Edward Norton busy? Johnny Depp wasn't interested? They couldn't even get a Baldwin brother (the younger two Baldwins kind of suck, but they are not even in the same league of suckitude as Jason Patric.) As you may have noticed, I find it tremendously irritating that a movie I want so badly to like (how often does Ron Eldard even get close to top billing?) is just so unbearably awful. Fuck the studio system!