Reviews
The film review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes gives the movie a 36%. Of 118 reviews, 42 were "Fresh" (positive) and 76 "Rotten" (negative).
Time film reviewer Richard Corliss indicated he was not pleased with the outcome, concluding, "...f 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."
Claudia Puig of USA Today was more appreciative, writing, "Caine and Law are in fine form bantering cleverly in this entertaining cat-and-mouse game, thanks to the inspired dialogue of Harold Pinter. They parry, using witticisms instead of swords. Then they do a dance of deception, a veritable tango. There's thievery, peril and plenty of double-crossing. ... As directed by Kenneth Branagh, this new version is darker and more claustrophobic. In the original the house where all the action took place was Gothic and laden with gewgaws. The new domicile is stark and minimalist, and much more threatening. Branagh's version has more incipient horror and less camp."
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "It's no mystery that 'Sleuth' is fascinating," observing that Pinter "has written a new country house mystery, which is not really a mystery at all in terms of its plot, and eerily impenetrable in its human relationship" and that "in 'Sleuth' what celebrates is perplexing, ominous, insinuating material in the hands of two skilled actors." In contrast, J.R. Jones of The Chicago Reader wrote, "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."
Carina Chocano, writing in the Los Angeles Times, stated: "The verbal sparring is so sharp it's a wonder nobody loses an eye. ... it's an unmitigated pleasure to observe Caine and Law attack it with such ferocity...." Terry Lawson of the Detroit Free Press, on the other hand, criticized the performances by the lead actors, saying, "We're left with two suitably hammy performances by Caine and Law, who do not forget they are actors playing actors....
Leonard Maltin gave the film a "BOMB" rating, the lowest rating he has ever given a Branagh film, stating that the new version "has every ounce of entertainment drained from it" and called the film "unbelievably bad".
Read more about this topic: Sleuth (2007 Film)
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