Excellent but underrated film

Best movie of this year hands down!

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is a pretty good movie about a drug dealer with a conscience. I enjoyed the look and feel of the film, but felt that the script and story-line struggled at points. In one instance, Dafoe's character relates "White drugs for white people". Also, Dana Delaney puts in a good performance but definitely second to Dafoe's - her performance is not quite complete, and I was left feeling as though the film just had that extra something missing.This is a brilliant film. The raw, humane, unvarnished look at the life of a mid level drug dealer in Manhattan is uniquely captivating, and Willem Defoe plays the part to perfection. The story itself is underwhelming, common, real. The protagonist's struggles through life are much like anyone else's. Anyone else's in New York, at least. But the context of his life, the rhythms of it, are very different. The random encounters with love and violence touch him as arbitrarily as they touch each of us, and he reacts to them with the same confusion, elation, and pain. This is the film's genius, and it allows an unusually close emotional bond to develop between the protagonist and the audience.Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

A Paul Schrader film set in the dark and gritty streets of Manhattan should always be a good sign, but rather than feeling like a welcome return to Taxi Driver territory, Light Sleeper feels like an attempted knock-off by an inferior writer and director. On the surface, it has everything it takes to be an instant classic - quality actors, gorgeous cinematography, a tormented and torn protagonist. But it doesn't add up to a coherent and captivating film; the various subplots go nowhere and don't lead to a satisfying conclusion, Dafoe's narration is filled to the brim with clichés of the genre, which doesn't help his character feel any more interesting than it does. The music is awful and feels like it was dragged out of the 80's, and destroys any pretense of a neo-noir atmosphere the film may have. And while Dafoe gives a solid performance, and Susan Sarandon is absolutely terrific playing decisively against type, Dana Delany and Jane Adams didn't work for me and took a lot of credibility away from the film.Light Sleeper looks and feels like it should a neo-noir with old-fashioned storytelling and character study, which is why I wanted to like it much more than I did; maybe the high expectations are why I ended up disliking it more than it deserves. It's not a terrible movie - just one that should have been great, and is instead utterly forgettable and disposable. I remain a loyal fan of Paul Schrader, Willem Dafoe and Susan Sarandon, but to me this isn't a high point for any of them.

I attended a screening of "Light Sleeper," where Paul Schrader, after the screening, stood up and said something to the tune of, "Wow. No wonder that movie didn't do well at the box office." When I think about other Schrader movies, I can appreciate the thought, but movies he's written or directed (see "Last Temptation," "Light of Day," et cetera), one can't help but notice the similarities... It seems Paul can't get past his mid-western, Christian Reformed upbringing. Instead of getting a little therapy to deal with whatever ghosts or saints or demons lay waste in his psyche, he's working it out on film... And somehow, I'm getting charged for it.OK. I will admit, Light Sleeper has great performances by Delaney, Dafoe, and Sarandon.... but if I had their character's lives, I couldn't sleep either.Five cents, Please.

Hollow ManSpoilers herein.I particularly enjoy movies that are part of a series. That way, the context is even sharper than the usual genre and societal factors that come into play. Context is what movies are all about, and most particularly Schrader-written movies.In this case we have three films (`Taxi,` this, `Dead') about night prowlers in a corrupting city, all written by Schrader. Two have been directed by Scorsese and one by Schrader himself. Scorsese is by far the more competent director, but I like Schrader's approach better.Scorsese selects actors that are full of energy and encouraged to radiate. They become prime movers in the universe we see. The camera is attached to them, in `Taxi Driver' quite literally. As these guys move through the world, the energy of the world feeds back. This fullness of energy and exchange drives Scorsese projects. Cage in `Bring out the Dead.'That's despite the fact that what Schrader had in mind was something different. In every one of his scripts he creates a world that moves on its own and pulls energy out of his hapless hero (always a man, except when he tried it with his lover).The correct type of actor for this is one that can create negative energy, someone who visibly sucks life from outside forces. Scorsese cannot do this, but he came close with Dafoe in `Temptation.'The final scenes in `Temptation' are informed by Michelangelo's Pieta, an amazing statue of the slain Christ in Mary's lap. She is alive - all the forms of her face and body are constructed in such a way to contain her. Jesus on the other hand is more than simply desiccated. Every form in his being comes not from what is contained within, but what has been taken by the environment. He is defined by negative form. Not quite scallops and scoops, but their more subtle and devilish cousins.Dafoe pulled this off in spite of Scorsese's meddling. Schrader was there in Morroco and saw this, so commandeered Dafoe for this project. Here, Dafoe sucks energy from what surrounds him. His character doesn't understand why he is so jinxed, but he is. A locomotive of removal, a hollow man hollowing out the space around him.Sarandon is merely furniture, and does the job adequately. Her role is to give an excuse for talk about karma and akashic records. Delany needs be no more than one of the hapless lives caught in the vacuum.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.