| Carolco Pictures | Release Date: January 1, 1992 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
18
Mixed:
5
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Light Sleeper isn't about the help he can get from psychics, however; it's about desperation that makes him project healing qualities upon anyone who is halfway sympathetic. The movie is familiar with its life of night and need. It finds the real human qualities in a person like the Susan Sarandon character - who, in a crisis, reacts with loyalty and quick thinking.
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I think what I like best about Light Sleeper -- more than Dafoe's peculiar magic or Schrader's wise, sympathetic writing -- is the fact that it gives you so much to chew on. So many contemporary films seem to evaporate as soon as you walk out of the theater. Light Sleeper resonates. [04 Sep 1992, p.C1]
Sleeper is the best Schrader-directed film since the dashed promise of his Blue Collar debut in 1978. [21 Aug 1992, p.4D]
This doesn't have the high style that made Taxi Driver or American Gigolo instant cultural icons - although Schrader shows more than a few traces of Scorsese as his camera creeps- perhaps because it's concerned with a chilly 90s that looks back with a sort of nostalgia on the cocaine-fuelled craziness of earlier years. But it does develop powerfully the themes of Schrader's earlier work and will not disappoint his fans.
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A problem with Schrader's script is that he too slavishly follows the Taxi Driver outline, needlessly giving a violent conclusion to Light Sleeper. We sit there noting the resemblance to the 1975 movie more than being absorbed into the drama. Nonetheless, Light Sleeper is emblematic of an era, and is recommended on that basis and on the excellent quality of it acting. We remember the character more than we believe the machinations they've run through.
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Schrader's dialogue ranks among his best, and Sarandon chews up her delightful role with infectious, boldly confrontational relish. And for a director whose films have often been bleak and almost clinically detached, Light Sleeper presents Schrader in a new and philosophically redemptive light.
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In the end, Light Sleeper is slightly more optimistic than some of Schrader's earlier works, but it's a tough, hard-nosed film that shows, in small moments here and there, what life in drugs is all about - and it ain't all about fun. [11 Sep 1992, p.3F]
Paul Schrader has created a pointed companion piece to his earlier portraits of lonely outcasts (Taxi Driver, American Gigolo). Contemplative and violent by turns, this quasi-thriller about a long-time drug dealer leaving the business has a great deal to recommend it but could have been significantly better had Schrader done some fresh plotting and not relied on his standby gunplay to resolve issues.
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