The Detroit News onvincing you that an act of perjury actually amounts to an act of heroism is no easy trick for a movie to pull off.
Sleepers does exactly that.
It's an extraordinarily persuasive film, one that's powered by unassailable and, finally, quite devastating emotional logic. The luster of the cast directly reflects the power of the script, which is based on Lorenzo Carcaterra's stingingly authentic best seller. On film, the book becomes a complex, populous three-act drama, fully attentive not only to the characters but also to their milieu and to the issues their bitter shared experience brings to light. Levinson's work here is as remarkable for its clarity and precision as for its thoughtfulness. Sleepers first offers a pungently detailed evocation of carefree times for a quartet of boys who, in the '60s, hang out and make childish mischief together in the tough New York neighborhood known as Hell's Kitchen.