• Reviewed by: Stuart Galbraith IV
• Review Date: Jul 02, 2025
• Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Review

The final film of director Mike Hodges, who died in 2022 at age 90, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead (2003) has a set-up quite similar to his classic debut, Get Carter (1971): a gangster returns to his former hometown to investigate the death of his younger brother, who died under mysterious circumstances. The similarities mostly end there, however, and Clive Owen’s antihero veers off in an entirely different direction from Michael Caine’s iconic Get Carter characterization.

The film received very mixed reviews—many hated it, like Leonard Maltin’s 1 1/2 rating in his Movie Guide book—but I found the methodically-paced film and its reticent protagonist rather hypnotic. It’s the kind of ambiguous picture that deliberately leaves a lot of story material out. As you watch it, you’re cognizant of what’s happening in the current scene unspooling before you, but it’s unclear how it relates to the scenes before and after; events and character relationships only begin to make sense in the story’s second-half, and even then, not completely. It’s the kind of movie best experienced by letting is wash over you, rather than trying to concurrently follow its plotline on Wikipedia.

Davey Graham (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) is a low-level if free-spirited, good-looking drug dealer selling coke to a woman named Stella (Daisy Beaumont), who’s hosting an upper-class party. Three men in a Range Rover follow Davey’s taxi around London, eventually ambushing him in an alley where they drag him into a garage, where luxury car dealer Boad (Malcolm McDowell) inexplicably but violently rapes him. The following morning Davey stumbles back to his rundown flat, climbs into a drawn bathtub fully clothed, and many hours later is discovered by his gangster friend Mickser (Jamie Foreman) and downstairs neighbor Mrs. Bank (Sylvia Syms). They are shocked to find Davey dead, his throat cut in an apparent suicide.

Mickser visits Helen (Charlotte Rampling), former lover of Davey’s older brother, Will (Clive Owen), a once powerful London gangster who walked away from the underworld three years before; we first see him unshaven and living out of a van, doing freelance forestry and on-site security work. They wonder if he’ll return for Davey’s funeral, which is certain to stir things up for crime boss Frank Turner (Ken Stott), who has assumed control of Will’s former criminal interests. Upon his return, Will’s old gang assumes he’s at long last come back to retake control of his territory, but Will’s only interested in learning about his brother’s fate. Disbelieving the suicide ruling and perhaps thinking Turner might have ordered Davey’s murder, Will has a second post-mortem performed; he learns about Davey’s anal rape. Later, he and Mickser trace Davey’s last night on earth to Stella’s party, hoping to locate Davey’s rapist.

Directed and photographed (by Michael Garfath) with impressive neo-noir flair, I’ll Sleep When I’m, Dead visually and tonally resembles Get Carter only slightly; rather, it has the look and feel of the great French film Tchao pantin (aka So Long, Stooge, 1983). It’s methodically paced but never dull; reticent Clive Owen probably speaks less than 40 lines in the entire film though one can read his character’s emotions throughout. Most of the film’s many dots don’t connect, at least not initially: Why does Boad rape Davey? Is Boad Turner’s boss, or the other way around, or are their actions completely unrelated? Why is Will living like a hermit in a van?

Many of these and other questions are answered by the end, others not. My one complaint about the picture is that it introduces a critical last-minute complication (concerning Rampling’s character) that, in leaving it completely unresolved, is something of a monumental cop-out. Had the 10-second single shot that sets up this complication been excised, the film still would have ended ambiguously but more satisfyingly so.

Nevertheless, the slow-burn qualities of I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead are rather mesmerizing, and it captures London’s nighttime underbelly vividly. The performances are good, particularly Jamie Foreman’s Mickser, and the smoldering musical underscoring by Simon Fisher-Turner is appropriately moody and helps in keeping the tone off-balance and unpredictable.

Kino’s new Blu-ray of I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead appears use the same video transfer and same extra features as Australia’s Imprint Blu-ray from 2023. Shot on 35mm film and presented in its original 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio, the image is clean with excellent color, contrast, and blacks, while the DTS-HD Master Audio (in 5.1 and 2.0 surround mixes) is likewise excellent, with inventive use of discrete surround and directional effects. Optional English subtitles are provided, and the disc is Region “A” encoded.

Extras consist of an audio commentary track with director Mike Hodges and writer Trevor Preston, who can also be heard on the first of two deleted scenes that are included. Mike Hodges and I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead is a 27-minute program about the film produced for the BBC at the time of the film’s release. A trailer rounds out the supplements.

A fitting final work from director Mike Hodges, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead has modest rewards, but the film is definitely worthwhile and recommended.

– Stuart Galbraith IV