I've just finished watching this... it's in my VLC player for two days. The main reason why it took me so long to go through it is that I find things that I love about it, and on the other hand I find things that I can't believe are so very poor and almost make vomit... and so this dichotomy makes the movie a hard piece to swallow.
I'll try to name a few of the negative aspects first:
1. The plot line seems confused and overly complex, and the poor graphic details of the movie make it pale and uninteresting to look at (which, if it where not the case, could help create interest on the viewer's part to keep pace with the strange and intricate family drama)
2. There are hardly any other actors apart from the characters; this means there are little to no extras, no population, no sense of society... all it looks like is a void and empty sequence of dark scenarios with little to no discerning features whatsoever... Making the whole thing a little too often look like a sequence of amateur theater shoots. In other words, the director and producers did not bother to put any effort into making the environment of the film credible. It isn't at any time delivering any kind of veracity to the possibility of the story ever finding an imaginable realm where it could take place.
3. Things don't seem too thought out. The main character is a prince, or some kind of bastard descendant of a ruler... but he does not behave like one. You can hardly piece together how he lived his life, why he is hunted down (right at the beginning), or why is his brother convinced that he is somehow responsible for his father's death. I mean... it doesn't feel like a noble family's intuitive dynamic at all, certainly not like the type on a Dostoievsky novel.
4. It looks like it's a student project, because the acting is so over the top, on a few of the parts... Other, elder, actors are brilliant. The difference is astounding. There seems to be no effort to push the younger actors into delivering a real credible performance. It feels very strange.
OK, on to the good parts:
1. The dialogs. They really present a vocabulary experience that is close to film noir classics, and and times is so poetic and powerful that it actually makes you think of Russian novels. It seems to be very well written throughout, but poorly executed. I almost need to close my eyes to the sad spectacle of the movie, to listen to the character's amazing discourse on some parts. The main character is poorly crafted, I thought... It lacked coherence in it's actions, some real sense of integrity, I feel the way it is both shown and interpreted is very silly, exaggerated and completely nonsensical.
2. Some of the acting is amazing, Tony Amendola especially! I rarely see such talent in an actor... he was the only one (maybe alongside Patrick Bachau) that picked up the text and brought it to a credible output... and he stands out brilliantly.
3. The fighting. Well, I thought fights here would be ridiculous... in the context of the dramatic feud that takes place through the plot. But in the end, they are quite contrary, almost the best this film has to show. They seem well rehearsed, well executed and choreographed, and look pretty cool. Too bad the scenarios in which they take place are so lame, and incoherent... Where it not for that, the fight scenes would be some of the most consistent I've seen.
4. The sense of sympathy. The core idea of this film seems to be so appealing, I can almost imagine this script beating the crap out of a Frank Miller adaptation of Sin City. I can compare this title to "The Spirit"... "The Spirit" has a million dollar budget, looks brilliant, but it's absolutely horrible (week and whack storyline, terrible acting, horrendously tedious and terrible directing), but "The Perfect Sleep" - if it had better and more consistent casting and directing - and the visual investments of "The Spirit" could have been a fabulous work of art. It feels like something that should be re-done by some serious experts, because I believe there would be much better ways of delivering the script.
In the end, it's hardly worth watching unless you don't have anything better to do. I hope this helped... My vote of 5 goes to the writers and the initial concept that could have been brilliantly executed, to the idea that could have been... And an incentive to Pardoe, who imagined it, to learn from this experience and do better next time.
