Where Sleeping Dogs Lie (1991) starring Dylan McDermott, Tom Sizemore, Sharon Stone, Ron Karabatsos directed by Charles Finch Movie Review

Where Sleeping Dogs Lie (1991)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Dylan McDermott in Where Sleeping Dogs Lie (1991)

Simply Sleeping

Bruce (Dylan McDermott) is a screen writer who struggles to dumb down his pretentious writing to be what the studios want and will pay for which leaves him poor, hungry and homeless. It also leaves him house sitting a run down mansion with a secret past as it is the scene of an infamous murder. Whilst cleaning the place up and showing it to potential buyers he allows Eddie Hale (Tom Sizemore) to temporarily rent a room. With his ex-lover and still his agent Serena (Sharon Stone) pushing him to write something great he begins looking in to the murder at the mansion for some inspiration.

Twenty five minutes in and nothing has happened in "Where Sleeping Dog Lie" other than one scene which may grab some people's attention as it feature Dylan McDermott in a towel looking like he has stepped out of the shower. Considering there is only 95 minutes to this movie that is roughly a quarter wasted. Okay to be fair it has set up the situation and character of Bruce as one of those writers who will starve for their art which to be honest isn't a good thing because it doesn't make him overly likeable especially when he is prone to melodramatic walking and spinning off of the walls like a crazy man.

Anyway after 25 minutes as Bruce sits down to write "Diary of a Murderer", researching the gruesome past of the house by spreading everything over the wooden floor rather than organizing it so it is easy to find not a lot more happens. So okay we have Eddie Hale moving in at which point it doesn't take a genius to know where this is going and sadly the cinematography whilst trying to create style ends up coming across as pretentious as the character of Bruce. To put things into perspective I already guessed where the movie was going and who was who and had given up on hoping for some sort of realism because "Where Sleeping Dog Lie" ends up all about the look and style which for me not only doesn't work but actually sucks the life out of a story which had some potential.

What this all boils down to is that you could say that "Where Sleeping Dog Lie" has big ideas but can't deliver them and ends up seemingly deluded by how good it thinks it is when in truth it isn't. It has some plus points with one of those being Tom Sizemore but far too much of it is ridiculous and pretentious.


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