After discovering his wife (Nevan Rowe) has had an affair with his best friend (Ian Mune), Smith (Sam Neill) abandons his family for a deserted island.
While Smith returns to land from exile, he finds the world he left behind has changed:
Spurred on by industrial unrest and some false flag actions, the New Zealand government has become a dictatorship, with an armed resistance movement and American military ‘advisors’ on-hand to fight them.
When he is arrested by the regime, Smith is forced to go on the run as a fugitive,
A resistance fighter by circumstance, will Smith have what it takes to save his family - and his country?
To celebrate the spooky season, The Midnight Ramble will be exploring a cinematic region it has only sparingly covered: New Zealand horror and genre cinema.
To inaugurate this programme, we start with Roger Donaldson’s nightmare vision of a near-future dystopia.
While modest on its own terms, Sleeping Dogs marked a landmark in New Zealand film when it was released in 1977.
The first New Zealand feature in over a decade (since John O’Shea’s Don’t Let It Get You), its success - along with new works by other filmmakers like Geoff Murphy - led to the creation of the New Zealand Film Commission.
I read the source novel, Smith’s Dream, as a teen. I was interested in alternative history and dystopian fiction, and it was one of the few local examples of the genre.
I watched Sleeping Dogs around the same time and remember being underwhelmed by it.
After Sam Neill passed away, I wanted to give it another look.
In light of the government’s increasingly authoritarian bent - and the US’s dropping its mask around the rules-based international order - it also felt appropriate for a reappraisal.
Written as an anti-Vietnam allegory, that message is somewhat muffled in the transition to film.
In its favour, Sleeping Dogs features some good photography, and some solid attempts at suspense.
However, the script is awash in cliches, aiming for a New Holllywood-style cynicism, but coming off as a vaguely competent action thriller.
The local cast range from fine to wooden: Neill would rubbish his performance but his unease is belayed by an inherent charisma.
American import Warren Oates adds some welcome swagger as an special forces commander who befriends Smith.
An important film in the history of NZ film, and an early showcase for future luminaries.
On its own terms, Sleeping Dogs is a crude but occasionally effective thriller.
With the direction NZ and world politics have taken in recent years, the film has a new sense of urgency that has more danger than the Muldoon-era fable was intended to evoke.
No comments:
Post a Comment