Sleeping Dogs (1982)

Excellent but underrated film

Best movie of this year hands down!

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

I first saw this on Channel 4 away back in 1986 and as far as I know it was its only broadcast on British network television and was impossible to find in the preceding years . It was a film that stayed in my memory and I often wondered if it was as good as I remembered . After just seeing it again after an interval of more than 25 years I'm happy to report that my memory hasn't cheated and is every bit as good as I remember it My own knowledge of New Zealand is that it's a country of great natural wilderness . It's slightly bigger than mainland Britain but only has a population of 4 million . New Zealanders I have met have been uniformly friendly and any conversation quickly gets round to either rugby or hiking in the mountains and forests of their homeland . The only complaint Kiwis have of their country is that life there is very mundane and boring . Bearing this mind the scenario of SLEEPING DOGS means if life is grim as it is seen here what hope is there for the rest of humanity ? From a film making point of view it's a movie that is rather flat and low key and this shouldn't be taken in any negative way . The budget could have been bigger but instead of spectacle we're shown the very human elements of political chaos . By that I mean people just want to get on with their lives but are unable to due to a violently repressive state on one side and revolutionaries trying to the state by a system of government that may be just as bad It's interesting how much resonance the film has with New Zealanders on this page but when the film was produced and indeed when I saw it in the mid 1980s the scenario was being played out for real in the killing fields of South America where people would simply " disappear " if they'd make their political ideas too well known to the wrong people . Thankfully we've moved on from the dystopian future as seen here

I was slightly confused by the content of this movie. From what I gathered, Sam Neill's character was a family man whose wife had an affair, and he was then mistaken for a guerrilla. There was plenty of guerrilla warfare on the streets who were trying to protest something. I couldn't quite gather what it was. There were plenty of shoot-em-up scenes on the streets and in the wilderness when Neil was trying to escape and clear his name. Other than that, I thought the movie was decent. The scene where he was imprisoned in a dank jail cell was harrowing and unforgettable, and I loved the part where he vomits on the guards to escape from the transport car. I sort of liked the movie and might recommend it.** 1/2 out of ****

I remember trying to see this film when I was 12 or 13 but the friend who bought the tickets ending up buying tickets for The Magic Roundabout and the Blue Cat. What a disappointment at the time.Seeing it for the first time subsequently, the optimum word is prescient. Donaldson showed scenes that were fresh and on a scale never scene in NZ cinema before. Skyhawks dropping bombs on the terrorists (Mune and Neill). "Spooky" is the word most used by those who have commented in this forum.Having met Carl Stead last year in London, I was impressed by his philosophy regarding the films success in NZ at the time. Comprimises were made to the author's chagrin but in the end the story fulfilled its cinematic requirements. Donaldson along with Geoff Murphy were pioneers of a new revolution in film-making for New Zealand. The first NZ film I had seen that opened up the dark under belly of an immature and isolated nation in troubled times. The movie is dated now but the impact in context of the time it was made is undeniable.

Based on the novel Smith's Dream by academic C. K. Stead, Sleeping Dogs is set in a totalitarian New Zealand. Smith moves to the country to escape trouble but is framed by the state as a terrorist.The rest of the film involves his attempts to avoid arrest and his eventual fate.Released in 1977, the film possessed a poignancy for New Zealanders, who at the time viewed the then Muldoon National Government with some suspicion. A scene involving riot police in an Auckland street was a chilling portent of events during the 1981 Springbok rugby tour to New Zealand, and indeed on its release in the USA, some Americans confused the film's images with media reports of the tour protests.Notable for Sam Neill's role as Smith, the movie started a late 1970s revival in the New Zealand film industry, including movies such as The Scarecrow, Skin Deep, and Smash Palace.