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Derek Malcolm's rating
Poisoned tea for two
By
Derek Malcolm
22 Nov 2007
A seven-and-a-half minute ovation at the Venice Festival gave Kenneth Branagh and Harold Pinter's version of Anthony Shaffer's old Broadway and West End theatrical success the best of starts.
The next day, the Italian critics were almost uniform in their praise. But others at the Festival were not so pleased, preferring the more playful, thoroughly theatrical Joe Mankiewicz film of 1972.
That had a screenplay by Shaffer himself and starred Laurence Olivier as the writer Andrew Wyke who invites Michael Caine's Milo to his home and abjures him to stop bedding his wife. In return the younger man will get half the winnings from an insurance scam. All he has to do is fake a heist in Wyke's house.
The original film was theatre of cruelty dressed up as a piece of absurdist fun, and critics at the time were suitably amazed that Caine could keep up with Olivier's gentlemanly tour de force.
Now we have Caine as Wyke and Jude Law (the film's producer) as Milo, and it would be fair to say that Law only just keeps up with Caine's performance. Added to that, Pinter's dialogue is real theatre of cruelty stuff, bleak and pessimistic throughout. Branagh films the whole thing in a stark, modernist, gadget-ridden set which seems as much like a torture chamber as a suitable home for a best-selling scribe.
The result is strangely cold and airless, as if these two rather nasty individuals are human snakes determined to get the fatal bite in first. The writer is a pompous swine and the young seducer is after anything he can get - besides the wife we never see. There's nobody to like and it is difficult to care which is the winner who takes all.
Perhaps Olivier, were he to see the new film, would have liked it better since, despite accepting the film role, he is said to have told Anthony Quayle, who appeared in the play: "What are you doing in a piece of piss like this?" This is not so much a piece of piss as a cup of poisoned tea, concocted by a writer noted for his ability to equate emotional violence with sexual politics.
Almost every line has been altered, only sometimes for the better. But the main struts of Shaffer's play remain and still seem more theatrical than cinematic. The principal pleasure is to watch the actors, with Caine easily transcending his good old boy Cockney image with a portrait of shrewd vileness covering inner vulnerability that could hardly be more apt under the circumstances of this adaptation.
Law who, for a reason I don't understand, has to impersonate Inspector Doppler as well as the "jumped up pantry boy" of Shaffer's imagining, makes Milo less of a devil incarnate and more of a self-interested fool. The woman in the case, you feel, is not flesh and blood at all but a pawn in the ghastly game the two men play with each other.
Whether you like the film probably depends on whether you can treat it all as seriously as Pinter and Branagh. If you can't, this short, brackish piece will not work at all, even if you don't regard it as a piece of piss.
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Reader views (4)
I have never been so disappointed. The original was breezy and brilliant, but the whole game playing theme has been removed, making Law's 'revenge' into a nonsense. And he is, frankly, trying too hard. Compare Caine's measured reveal in the original to Law's jumping-around, playground acting. Pinter might have made an interesting movie with two men in a big house, but why ruin Sleuth?
- Steve Doak, London, England, 01/12/2007 09:40
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Reference Sandy of the US's comments- I take nothing back from my previous comments. If anything I will augment them. It was in fact far worse than my review indicated; more would have been unprintable. I think over and above the stilted, staged and wooden acting was the story. If we are to share time with two characters at least make the story worthy of our sacrifice. The premise of the lover of a man's wife being cajoled into attempting to rob jewellery from his house was nothing short of farcical. How it ever even made the London stage God only knows. I can only imagine it was because of the talents of Olivier. It really is the stuff of Hollywood. And maybe that's why, with respect, you found it rewarding, given your geographic location!
- Roger Goldsmith, Southsea, Hampshire, 29/11/2007 10:41
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I was amazed at your review of SLEUTH. I have to disagree
totally - I understand why the Venice audience gave it a seven and 1/2 minute ovation. If you ask me it was Caine who barely kept up with the energy and action Law brought to the film. If you hadn't seen the earlier
movie and didn't know the piece as you say, and I doubt that you were immune from having read about it ,but given so I would not have recognized the inspector, I know Law's face and voice well and thought
that performance within a performance was wonderful as did many others who saw the movie and singled it out. Forget the merits of the story it is what it is and the idea is valid - two males fighting over the female who ceases to be the prize because life itself has become the
prize when the fight excalates 'to the death'. The l972 version was good
but actually I was more impressed with Caine's performance in that
than with Olivier's which was a schock but there were parts I thought
were silly and overdone - I had seen the play too and found that to be more entertaining than the movie actually. In the new version I felt Caine was a little too internalized and inactive until forced to be so. Not
the greatest movie ever made but worth seeing for the acting alone!
- Sandy, Boynton Beach FL USA, 22/11/2007 14:30
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I saw this at a Portsmouth screen two weeks ago. I have not seen the play, did not know the story, but because of Pinter and my love of him as a writer, I felt obliged to watch it. I thought the film was a toal farce. A collection of worthy talents, a wonderful writer, and a package that was nothing short of total nonsense. It was like a Whitehall farce. I found the premise of a man agreeing to try to rob jewellery from his mistress’s husband quite bizarre and totally unbelievable. Also the amount of £1m, their value, hardly seemed enough to decorate one of the rooms of the minimalist high tech house the owner resided in. And then to my amazement I had to witness Jude Law’s character , an out of work actor, pretending to be to a police Inspector. I would not have let such a character through the door. No wonder Jude Law’s character was in-between jobs. I am surprised he even made it as an extra. Ever. This was all in all a total letdown. I am amazed that so many great talents put their name to such a load of nonsense.
- Roger Goldsmith, Southsea, Hampshire, 22/11/2007 13:37
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