Sleepers
Short description
Four boys grow up in Hell's Kitchen, the tough New York neighbourhood where priests and mobsters share influence, guided by a parish priest who tries to keep them on the right path. A prank goes badly wrong and nearly kills a man, and the friends are sent to a reformatory. There, guards beat, torture and sexually abuse the boys, with one guard in particular responsible for the worst of it. Years later, two of them, as adults, recognise their former tormentor and shoot him dead. The other two have become a journalist and an assistant district attorney, and they work to free their friends, drawing on the neighbourhood's priest and its underworld connections, while a sensational court hearing unfolds.
Barry Levinson directed and wrote the screenplay, working from Lorenzo Carcaterra's account of his own youth. Released in 1996, it was his thirteenth film as director, following Jimmy Hollywood and preceding Wag the Dog. The cast includes Kevin Bacon as the abusive guard, Robert De Niro as Father Bobby, Dustin Hoffman as the defence lawyer, Jason Patric, Brad Pitt and Bruno Kirby, among seventy-one credited performers. Made for about 44 million dollars, it took roughly 166 million worldwide, a solid commercial result. On IMDb it holds 7.5 from about 251,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.6 from over 4,000, while critics' reviews average 6.7, so audiences have rated it somewhat more warmly than reviewers.
What's left behind the scenes
- The filming schedule was arranged in such a way that actor Kevin Bacon never met Robert De Niro or Dustin Hoffman on set.
- The author of the novel on which the film is based, Lorenzo Carcaterra, claimed that the plot of the book was based on real events, but the New York Bar Association was unable to find any documentary evidence of this story in state archives.
- For De Niro, "Awakenings" was the third film in his career where he played a Catholic priest: in the drama "Confessional Secrets" (1981) he played the role of a real padre, and in the comedy "We're No Angels" (1989) — a fake one.
- Brad Renfro (1982-2008) and Joe Perrino filmed in contact lenses so that their eyes would be the same color as those of Brad Pitt and Jason Patric, who played the grown-up characters of Renfro and Perrino.
- Seven firecrackers were used in the scene of Kevin Bacon's character's death. He wore a bulletproof vest under his costume, but the actor still suffered burns from the gunpowder.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
