Sleuth
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: October 12, 2007 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
49
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
11
Mixed:
14
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
It's like "Deathtrap" crossed with "Cribs" as staged by Stanley Kubrick. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Caine, who has never been much for the stage, is a superb screen actor, so good his master classes on acting for the camera are on DVD. Here, dry and clipped, biting and savage, he goes for the kill. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
A pretty good movie. It just isn't a very good "Sleuth," exactly. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
I think the movie works best if you know the original and have a taste for goofy revisionism. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterRay Bennett
Despite top-flight acting from Michael Caine and Jude Law, it loses its grip in the third act and let's the air out of what might have been a memorably gripping film. Read full review
70
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
Sleuth is well acted, and directed by Branagh with chilly, distant ingenuity. It has a certain edge and daring, or more to the point it pretends to. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesCarina Chocano
Language this lethal has all but disappeared from the movies, and it's an unmitigated pleasure to observe Caine and Law attack it with such ferocity. Sleuth is nasty fun. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
The 1972 movie was better paced and presented a superior story but this one has its own pleasures. It's an interesting failure - a film that works more successfully as a study of technique and writing than as a motion picture. Read full review
63
USA TodayClaudia Puig
While the entire premise of Sleuth is a gimmick, having Michael Caine and Jude Law remake the 1972 adaptation of Anthony Shaffer's Tony Award-winning play heightens the gimmick quotient. Read full review
63
New York PostKyle Smith
Just when things should be getting exciting and complex, they become repetitive and predictable. Subtext becomes hint becomes statement becomes declaration. For once, Pinter is a little too easy to understand. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Caine and Law may not be playing human beings, but Pinter’s sense of humor is at least more interesting than Shaffer’s. Caine in particular appears to enjoy honing his cold-eyed stare. Read full review
58
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
At 86 minutes, Sleuth '07 plays like a Cliffs Notes version of the original (which was skillfully adapted by Anthony Shaffer from his own hit play) with far too much of its pacing and delicious texture ruthlessly cut. Read full review
50
VarietyRobert Koehler
The results will be received with a large, loud yawn by all but the most loyal fans of Pinter and hard-working co-stars Michael Caine and Jude Law. Read full review
50
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
The result is unfortunate: Pinter can't find emotional depths that just aren't there, but dispenses with most of what made the original entertaining in the search for them. Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
Even lousy adaptations have worth, if they attract attention to little-seen originals. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy Burr
The new version is a shiny piece of hardware that might as well be called "Sleuth 2.0," and it's exactly what you would expect from Pinter: very clever, extremely cold. Maliciously entertaining, too, until the halfway point, when you suddenly start wondering why anyone should care. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleRuthe Stein
Sleuth"is that rare film that would have been better longer. You're not through looking at Caine and Law when the final credits roll. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
Little more than a sleek, stylish stunt. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
A high-pedigree, low-interest affair that serves mostly as an exercise in postmortem speculation: Why is a project with so many prominent names attached to it so sterile and lifeless? Read full review
50
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
This might have been OK for cable, but as a night out at the movies, it feels like a bit of a cheat. Read full review
50
Portland OregonianM. E. Russell
It's not a disaster: Branagh is an actor's director, and there are biting moments throughout and solid performances from Caine and Law. Read full review
40
Village VoiceElla Taylor
Whatever pleasure can be wrung from Sleuth lies in the black comedy of Caine and Law's sinuous symbiosis. Read full review
40
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
Director Kenneth Branagh has mercifully pared the action down to 88 minutes (the first movie dragged on for 138), but the final act, with its obscure homosexual flirtation, still seems to go on forever. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleJosh Rosenblatt
It takes something really special to bring together a Nobel Prize-winning writer, a director renowned for his Shakespeare adaptations, a two-time Oscar-winning actor who also happens to be a knight of the British realm, and the reigning No. 1 British screen heartthrob and still come up with nonsense. Read full review
40
EmpireSimon Crook
Minus a couple of brisk, black laughs, this hollow remake botches the twists and sucks the fun right out of its feisty source. Read full review
38
PremiereGlenn Kenny
This is a perhaps even more misbegotten remake than the Farrelly Brothers' update of "The Heartbreak Kid." Read full review
38
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Art-directed within an inch of its life, Sleuth has the smirky gloss of a project that everyone involved with thinks is terribly good, and terribly clever. These people - Branagh, Pinter, Law and the usually great Caine (even in bad stuff) - are laboring under an epic misconception. Sleuth is just terrible. Read full review
33
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
No doubt the list of talent involved in this remake sounded great, but the project hasn't been thought through as anything more than an arch exercise in style. And even in that trifling end, it fails utterly. Read full review
30
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
The result is that what was once insignificant is now insufferable. Read full review
30
TimeRichard Corliss
If you consider what the exalted quartet of Branagh, Pinter, Caine and Law might have done with the project, and what they did to it, Sleuth has to be the worst prestige movie of the year. Read full review
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