Sleepers (1996)

Four friends growing up in New York in the 1960s end up in a youth detention centre, where they are brutalised by the staff. We then meet them again, 13 years later, in 1981, and find out how those harrowing experiences have defined every aspect of their adult lives. 

The first half is compelling. Director Barry Levinson brilliantly sets the scene and evokes both time and place perfectly. But in the second half, the film seems to lose its way. A lengthy courtroom segment takes the focus away from the themes of friendship and community that initially made the film so watchable. And something about that plot – the convoluted account of a faked legal hearing – just doesn’t ring true. 

The cast is excellent, with memorable performances by Robert De Niro (reliably brilliant as a priest who befriends the boys), Minnie Driver (who falls in love with three of them), Dustin Hoffman (an alcoholic lawyer) and Kevin Bacon (one of the abusive staff at the Wilkinson Home for Boys). Brad Pitt is less convincing as the grown-up version of Michael Sullivan. 

There’s overbearing music by John Williams. 

The film is often disturbing, as you’d imagine from the subject matter – and all the more so because the 1995 novel it’s drawn from (by Lorenzo Carcaterra) is semi-autobiographical. It makes some profound points about how cruelty shapes and damages us, but somehow it still misses the mark.