I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead (review)

Legendary British director Mike Hodges (Croupier) and screenwriter Trevor Preston strip the mobster film down to its bare essentials, and the result is stark and relentless. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but daring filmgoers will find a shattering exploration of the psychological assault of crime on the criminal. Clive Owen (Beyond Borders) finds a grounded, quiet conviction as a retired mobster, one turned near hermit in self-imposed exile for his deeds, who returns to the fold to avenge his brother’s death; it’s not the film’s violence, which is minimal though shocking, that leaves the viewer reeling, but Owen’s passionate certainty about the devastating wages of sin, and Hodges’s clear-eyed baring of them.