With the actor uttering out the only piece of dialogue in the trailer teaser from yesterday - 'if you touch my son, I'll kill you,' the dark, gritty story will tell the tale of an undercover Las Vegas officer leaving no stone unturned.

Pumping up the action sequences as he looks to put his take on the revenge genre similar to the likes of Keanu Reeves in John Wick, Liam Neeson in Taken and Mel Gibson in Payback. The 48-year old is showing no signs of slowing down as he nears the 50 mark. But Jamie Foxx has done his bit for the upcoming flick Sleepless with the release of the trailer. The fact a SWAT team isn’t called to the hotel as soon as shots are fired at the hotel’s nightclub makes the whole thing seem even less believable in this day and age of heightened security.10 seconds is a short space of time to create a lasting impression. When it comes down to it, the actions by the police officers in this movie are often more erratic and implausible than the murderous drug dealer who doesn’t seem to care whom he hurts. Monaghan even gets into the rough and tumble with Foxx, proving her character to be tougher than she is smart. He does offer a couple good fight sequences, including one sampled directly from the original movie where Downes takes on a large goon in the hotel’s busy kitchen. Swiss director Baran bo Odar-whose German techno-thriller hit, Who Am I, helped bring him to these shores-follows other European filmmakers into the Hollywood ritual of lackluster projects that may have seemed better on paper to someone unaware of how weak the writing is. By comparison, the equally great Gabrielle Union has the unenviable task of playing Downes’ wife, a role that mostly involves her calling her husband to find out where their son is and only getting more involved in the story towards the very end. And yet, some of the decisions made by her character just don’t make much sense a wiser police officer would immediately call in reinforcements, for example. The best part of the movie is Michelle Monaghan as a police officer, because she actually makes an attempt to break away from stereotypes while her character fights sexism as much as she fights corruption in the police force. Johnson isn’t much better as his son-acting petrified one second and brave the next-while Mulroney and McNairy brush off their worst acting school bad guy impressions, never making their characters rise above the usual stereotypes. And when his son is finally kidnapped, you may even think he brought it upon himself. In other words, he doesn’t ever make a move that will allow you to root for him. It certainly doesn’t help that Downes is immediately set up as a corrupt cop willing to do anything to protect himself. Once she finds his hidden drugs, instead of turning them over, she decides to continue to follow Downes, hoping to get her hands on bigger fish.ĭespite the decent cast, Foxx seems out of his league trying to give this character much weight, or allow us any reason to care about him. Wisely, Downes immediately complies, bringing the stolen drugs to Rubino’s casino, but internal affairs officer Jennifer Bryant (Michelle Monaghan) is already onto Downes and tails him there. That puts them at odds with the owners of said drugs, a local drug dealer (Scott McNairy) and a wealthy hotel proprietor named Stanley Rubino (Dermot Mulroney), the latter of whom kidnaps Downes’ teen son Thomas (Octavius Johnson) to get the stolen drugs back. As the film opens, we watch him and his partner staging a drug heist, getting away with 25 kilos of cocaine. This fairly simple story about police corruption has been transplanted to Las Vegas where Jamie Foxx plays undercover cop Vincent Downes. So it’s a shame that Sleepless -a remake of Sleepless Night, a solid 2011 French film that few Americans had a chance to see-just never stands up to the premise it borrowed.

A good police thriller could certainly offer some welcome entertainment and distraction during this dreary month.

New movie sleepless