Prepare To Take A Snooze With Sleepless

 Is this really the best Hollywood can do by way of Jamie Foxx and Michelle Monaghan, sticking them in some already long forgotten January action/thriller? C'mon, both of these actors are so much more talented than this! Oh well, here's hoping both of them get better projects in the future, which should be (in theory) be easy cuz the 2017 movie that brings them together, Sleepless, is a thoroughly forgettable endeavor. In this feature, Foxx plays an undercover cop named Vincent Downs whose devotion to trying to go on the inside and take out Las Vegas drug crimelords has made him distant from his wife and son.


That relationship he shares with his son is further put through the wringer once some henchman for a casino owner/prolific figure in the world of narcotics pick up his son and hold him ransom until Vincent Downs returns some cocaine he stole the night before. In the middle of all this is Jennifer Bryant (Michelle Monaghan), an Internal Affairs officer convinced there's some internal corruption going on with local law enforcement that Downs is a part of. In order to get his son back, Downs is gonna have to navigate seedy gangster types and also Internal Affair agents in one night. All this activity will ensure he gets no rest at night, leaving him...........SLEEPLESS.

There's not much in Sleepless to make it at all notable in my mind. It has plot points and character beats that come off as far too similar to vastly superior action crime fare and it doesn't even have the decency to at least supply the story with a steady stream of cool action. Those looking at the premise concerning a dad going out on a mission of vengeance combined with an R-rating and hoping for some John Wick-style fun action will be sorely disappointed as the fight scenes are few and far between and when they do show up, they're limp and lifeless. A David Harbour/Jamie Foxx pool duel is the closest thing to any sort of memorable action in the entire film.

Worst of all, Sleepless wastes the talents of its lead actors considerably. I would consider Jamie Foxx one of our more versatile modern day leading men, he's a guy who can sell both the endearingly shy taxi driver of Collateral and an aggressive violent criminal in Baby Driver with equal levels of commitment. Here, Foxx never gets a fully formed character or even just a compelling archetype to inhabit, he's a blank slate that Foxx's charisma just can't make entertaining. Really, an action movie starring a guy as innately likeably and watchable as Foxx should be a slam-dunk win so it's shocking to see the uninteresting performance Foxx gives under the direction of director Baran bo Odar.

Michelle Monaghan also gets little to do beyond just swear a lot as an Internal Affairs officer grappling with a recently traumatic drug raid gone wrong while her partner in her crime investigation is played by David Harbour and the most interesting part of his performance here is that I believe it was the last role he did prior to filming the first season of Stranger Things, the project that woudl forever alter his career. Scoot McNairy is the only one who gets anything of note to do since it is unconventional-ish casting to pair a younger actor like McNairy with the role of a big intimidating mob boss role but even he doesn't get much to do.

Too much of the screentime of Sleepless deals with overly complicated law enforcement espionage and none of it registers as interesting. Why they couldn't just let these assorted talented actors indulge in the very traits that make them talented actors or at least incorporate some more fun action to mitigate the tedious plot is thoroughly beyond me. All I know is that Sleepless is a forgettable dud of a movie, one whose lackluster production value that makes it look like a direct-to-video movie from 2007 is only outmatched in terms of lackluster quality by its inability to properly utilize the quality actors at its disposal.