Sleepers (film)

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Sleepers (film)

Directed by	Barry Levinson
Produced by	Barry Levinson Steve Golin
Written by	Barry Levinson based on the novel by Lorenzo Carcaterra
Starring	Kevin Bacon Billy Crudup Robert De Niro Minnie Driver Ron Eldard Dustin Hoffman Jason Patric Brad Pitt
Editing by	Stu Linder
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	October 18, 1996
Running time	147 min
Language	English
IMDb profile

Sleepers (1996) is a dramatic movie based on Lorenzo Carcaterra's novel of the same name. Carcaterra alleges that the story is true, although evidence exists that some of events depicted could not have happened at the places described.^{[citation needed]}

1 Synopsis
2 Truth versus fiction
3 Cast
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Synopsis

The plot summary in this article or section is too long or detailed compared to the rest of the article.
Please edit the article to focus on discussing the work rather than merely reiterating the plot.

Lorenzo "Shakes" Carcaterra, Thomas "Tommy" Marcano, Michael Sullivan and John Reilly are four childhood friends (played by Joseph Perrino, Jonathan Tucker, Brad Renfro and Geoffrey Wigdor) living in Hell's Kitchen, New York City in the mid-1960s. Shakes describes the ethnically-mixed working class neighborhood as a "place of innocence ruled by corruption." This essentially means that while the neighborhood is safe for children, the people running it are often involved in illegal activity. The four friends work for a local gangster named King Benny (Vittorio Gassman) who has them deliver bribe money to the local police precinct on a weekly basis. When King Benny and their families are not watching them, they are often under the eye of Father Bobby (Robert De Niro), himself a one-time delinquent turned priest. Despite his status as a man of the cloth, Father Bobby is still a force to be reckoned with. When John Reilly is hospitalized as a result of being beaten by his mother's boyfriend, Father Bobby confronts the man and warns him never to lay a hand on John again, vowing that the man will "need a priest to pray over [his] body". King Benny states that Father Bobby would have been a great hit man had he not decided to become a priest. The boys respect Father Bobby deeply, perhaps more than any of the other authority figures.

As the events of the 1960s (e.g. the civil rights movement, Vietnam) unfold, the neighborhood remains locked in time as the boys realize that all of these radical change groups protected by money and upper-class standing couldn't care less about Hell's Kitchen or similar neighborhoods. On a hot summer day, the boys see a Greek hot dog vendor whom they and the other neighborhood kids don't respect and tend to rip off. They decide to play a prank which involves stealing hot dogs, and ends up with the boys unexpectedly stealing the vendor's hot dog cart. A near-fatal accident occurs which results in the hot dog cart falling down a subway stairwell, crushing a man named James Caldwell (Don Hewitt) at the bottom of the stairs, almost killing him. Found guilty of reckless endangerment, Tommy, Michael and John are sentenced to 12 to 18 months and Shakes is sentenced to 6 to 12 months at the Wilkinson Home for Boys in upstate New York. The judge specifically tells Michael that it was only Father Bobby's intervention that kept him from a longer and harsher sentence.

Upon arriving at the Wilkinson home, the boys realize that they are not as fit for prison as the rest of the kids there. As described in the novel, the majority of the offenders are serving time for violent drug-related crimes. These four did not belong to a street gang and were seen in their neighborhood as relatively good kids whom the adults, many of whom served time in these facilities, did not think would ever end up in prison. Because of these underlying factors, head guards Sean Nokes, Henry Addison, Adam Styler and Ralph Ferguson (played by Kevin Bacon, Jeffrey Donovan, Lennie Loftin and Terry Kinney) readily abuse the Hell's Kitchen quartet. One night the four guards take them to the basement where they engage in the gang rape of the four boys as an assertion of their power and authority.

Throughout the four friends' stay, the guards continue to abuse them and other inmates physically and sexually, often while drunk. The guards also force them to perform other degrading acts, such as eating food off the floor. During a visit with Shakes, Father Bobby explains that he and his best friend served time at Wilkinson and that the friend, now at Attica Correctional Facility, was so damaged by his experiences at Wilkinson's that he stopped caring about his actions and their consequences. Father Bobby cautions Shakes against allowing himself to be destroyed in a similar fashion. When the guards put together a team of inmates to play against them in a touch football game, the four Hell's Kitchen boys are selected and decide to use the game as an opportunity to get back at the guards physically. They ask inmate Rizzo (Eugene Byrd), whose reputation is such the guards tend to leave him alone, to lead the team in assaulting the guards during the game. Rizzo agrees, and the inmates win the game, but the guards toss them into solitary confinement and beat Rizzo to death. During the remainder of their stay, the boys become hopeless and fear every night of their stay at Wilkinson. Shakes is the first one released after serving ten months.

The time jumps forward to 1981. John and Tommy (as adults, played by Ron Eldard and Billy Crudup), now gangsters, come across Sean Nokes in a Hell's Kitchen pub. Nokes, now middle-aged and down-and-out, apparently as a security guard for an armored car company, as suggested by his uniform and John's line "...to end up guarding other people's money". They murder Nokes in front of several witnesses.

Shakes and Mikey (as adults, played by Jason Patric and Brad Pitt) enlist the help of their childhood friend Carol Martinez (Minnie Driver), Father Bobby, a local cop named Nick Davenport (Daniel Mastrogiorgio), King Benny, and a struggling lawyer, Danny Snyder (Dustin Hoffman) to guarantee the acquittal of their friends and expose the actions of the guards and abuses at the Wilkinson Home for Boys, however, all files were destroyed some time back as now there is no actual evidence of their stay at Wilkinsons.

Snyder's career is floundering as he battles with alcoholism and drug abuse. King Benny, by now elderly but still very much in control of his turf, pressures Snyder to work what appears to be a hopeless case. Snyder thinks of every excuse he can to get the aging gangster to look for someone else, but King Benny refuses to relent, telling Snyder he'll "go down for the dirt nap" if he loses.

Mikey is an assistant District Attorney and arranges to be assigned to the case, secretly intending to lose as a means of getting revenge on the Wilkinson home. Shakes is a low-level editorial assistant at the New York Times, and uses contacts from this position to gather background information on the guards at Wilkinson's. Carol is a social worker, and uses her office to access files on Wilkinson's.

Guard Adam Styler, now a policeman, is arrested by the NYPD's Internal Affairs division led by Davenport for murdering a drug dealer. Guard Henry Addison is murdered by black gangsters led by Rizzo's older brother, Little Caesar, (Wendell Pierce) who discovers the truth from King Benny about how Rizzo really died in prison. In the courtroom, Guard Ralph Ferguson, now a social worker on Long Island, is discredited as a character witness as the abuses perpetrated by the guards are exposed in open court but his testimony is withdrawn from the case.

At first Snyder appears bungling and disorganized, using mainly material supplied to him anonymously by Shakes and Mikey, but as the trial progresses he begins to be effective, as he successfully casts doubt on several prosecution witnesses.

To clinch the case, after a long talk with Shakes and Carol, Father Bobby lies on the stand about where John and Tommy were the night of the shooting. Father Bobby claims they were at Madison Square Garden at a Knicks game with him and as a result, they are found not guilty as the jury does not doubt the word of a priest (ticket stubs to the game, surreptitiously supplied by King Benny, help convince the jury).

From there, the boys are reunited for a last time for a celebratory party at a Hell's Kitchen bar. In a brief epilogue, it's revealed that after the trial, John and Tommy return to their lives of street crime, and both die a few years later.

Mikey, stigmatized by the D.A.'s office for losing an apparently open-and-shut case, resigns and stops practicing law. He eventually moves to England's countryside to live alone, working as a carpenter part-time and never marrying. Shakes remains in the city and works his way up through the ranks of journalism. Carol continues to live in Hell's Kitchen, where she raises her son, John Thomas Michael Martinez, nicknamed "Shakes".

[edit] Truth versus fiction

Though Carcaterra claims that the book is a true story, critics have asserted that the majority of it, if not all of it, is fictional:

No record has been found for any such trial even remotely similar to the one depicted in the film.
Carcaterra's school records show that between the ages of 5 and 14, he only missed a total of three weeks worth of school; according to the book, he was incarcerated in a juvenile detention center for six months when he was 13, and he would not have had any school records for this period.
No records exist for any of the other three boys mentioned in the book.
No murders, as described in the book's closing chapters, took place on the dates specified.

Carcaterra states that everything he wrote was true, but that he did change names, dates and places to protect the identities of those involved, making it difficult to independently verify the facts. As an example, he states that he moved the location of the trial to Manhattan. If the trial had taken place in another jurisdiction, such as a different borough of New York or in New Jersey, that would not be reflected in the Manhattan district attorney and court records. The book also explains that school records were altered to show that the boys were in school during the time they were actually in Wilkinson. It is not surprising that only records for Carcaterra exist as his is the only real name used.

The version of the film shown on cable, although uncut, contains disclaimers before the end credits stating that the New York youth correctional authorities and the Manhattan district attorney's office deny that the events in the film took place. A final title card states that Carcaterra stands by his story.

[edit] Cast

Role	Actor
Sean Nokes	Kevin Bacon
Tommy Marcano	Billy Crudup
Father Bobby	Robert De Niro
King Benny	Vittorio Gassman
Carol Martinez	Minnie Driver
Danny Snyder	Dustin Hoffman
John Reilly	Ron Eldard
Lorenzo "Shakes" Carcaterra	Jason Patric
Michael Sullivan	Brad Pitt
Ralph Ferguson	Terry Kinney
Young Shakes	Joseph Perrino
Young John	Geoffrey Wigdor
Young Michael	Brad Renfro
Young Tommy	Jonathan Tucker
Young King Benny	Sean Patrick Reilly