Sleuth

Sir Michael Caine and Jude Law in Sleuth

Based on a novel by Anthony Shaffer and originally shot in 1972, this new version was scripted by Harold Pinter and directed by one of England’s finest directors, Kenneth Branagh.

A charming young man, Milo, comes to visit elderly writer Andrew.
Milo is Andrew’s wife’s lover and asks him to divorce her.
A battle of wits and generations begins: at first, the writer entices the young man into a terrifying trap that leaves Milo shocked and humiliated. Then it’s Milo’s turn to play a psychologically cruel vengeance.

After both contenders have stripped themselves of their dignity and played all the cards their clever brains can produce, there is no winner. Or is there?
 
In order to successfully produce a remake brimming with originality -  and that doesn’t feel like a remake at all -  Branagh has used a genius scriptwriter.

Then he has cast Sir Michael Caine -  who had played Milo in the  original, versus Laurence Olivier as Andrew -  to play Andrew this time around.
Given that now Milo is Jude Law he couldn’t really go wrong.
The two actors shine throughout the film and carry thw whole thing. They are actually the only people we see.
The action is set in a hi-tech mansion that enables the director to play with light and space as if he was staging a theatrical version of the drama. This gives a surreal edge to the story and to the cruel acts we’re witness to.

A complicated play of volumes, walls, concrete and glass symbolizes not only Andrew’s convoluted brain and criminal instinct, but also his cold and detached demeanour – and his failings in his marriage.
Jude Law has said that the two characters are “warriors who cannot remember what they are fighting for, but they will fight until victory.”

Again, kudos to the actors whose faces are mirrors for thoughts of unspeakable depravity, including a Pinter-esque scene of homosexual seduction that will go down in the history of creepiness.

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