‘Sleeping Dogs’: Russell Crowe’s New ‘Memento’ Copycat Is Fittingly Forgettable

Sleeping Dogs, which is in theaters Mar. 22, concerns a detective suffering from Alzheimer’s disease who chooses to reopen a past homicide case, and just as this sleuth can’t recollect precisely what took place during that long-ago investigation, Adam Cooper’s film assumes that none of his viewers will recall Christopher Nolan’s Memento or Atom Egoyan’s Remember—two films whose template it follows to a tee, albeit with considerably more noir-ish inflections. As the cop in search of answers that seem to be locked inside his unstable mind, Russell Crowe continues to prove that he’s better than the B-grade projects he’s now offered, but his convincing performance isn’t enough to elevate this surprise-free mystery.

Roy Freeman (Russell Crowe) awakens on his couch in a daze, the top of his head wrapped in a bandage. Looking around his living room, he spies numerous pieces of tape upon which are written his name, his address, directions to other rooms, and the fact that he has Alzheimer’s. It makes little sense that a man in need of such self-penned memos would live by himself, but flashbacks indicate that he’s in the care of a doctor who’s performed an experimental procedure in which electrodes have been implanted in his brain in the hopes of stimulating new neural pathways that will restore his memory. No sooner has he gotten his bearings than he’s called by a lawyer who informs him that Isaac (Pacharo Mzembe), a convict on death row for the murder of college professor Wieder (Marton Csokas), wants to see Roy. Clueless and curious, Roy agrees. During their sit-down, Isaac convinces Roy that he’s innocent of the crime, asserting that despite his confession, he had only been in the professor’s house that night to rob him, and wound up overhearing Wieder’s slaying at the hands of another enigmatic assailant.

Isaac encourages Roy to see Richard (Harry Greenwood), who’s writing a book about the murder. First, however, the former detective—who lost his job due to a calamitous DUI accident—visits his ex-partner Jimmy (Tommy Flanagan), who claims ignorance about Richard and tells Roy that they got their man and to leave it alone. Before he can track Richard down, Roy hears that he’s died of a suspicious fentanyl overdose. Through the type of convenient chance encounter that is this film’s stock and trade, he subsequently receives Richard’s never-published manuscript The Book of Mirrors, which fills in large gaps in the story, all of which director Cooper (working from his and Bill Collage’s script) dramatizes in unreliable flashback. Richard’s story revolves around his relationship with Laura (Karen Gillan), whom he depicts as his lover as well as the research assistant of Wieder. When Richard lost the ability to pay for school, Wieder helped him out and, by doing so, entangled him in a psychosexual love triangle.

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