Sleepless

If you’ve ever spent more than six hours in a windowless Las Vegas casino, you know that time eventually loses all meaning, replaced by a low-level hum of anxiety and the smell of expensive air freshener masking cheap cigarettes. That’s exactly the headspace Sleepless wants you to inhabit for 95 minutes. It’s a movie that pulses with the neon-blue anxiety of a late-night bender, but instead of a hangover, you’re left with the nagging feeling that you’ve seen this all somewhere before—likely in a better-lit room and in a different language.

I watched this while my radiator was making a rhythmic clanking sound that perfectly synced up with the gunfire on screen, and honestly, that accidental 4D audio experience provided more tension than the actual script did.

The Lost Art of the Mid-Budget Theatrical Brawler

Released in the early weeks of 2017, Sleepless arrived at a strange crossroads in cinema history. We were firmly in the era where mid-budget, R-rated action movies were starting to migrate almost exclusively to streaming services. If this movie came out today, it wouldn’t even touch a theater; it would spend three days at the top of the Netflix "Top 10" and then vanish into the digital ether. But in 2017, we still saw Jamie Foxx (fresh off his high-energy run in Baby Driver) leading a theatrical charge into a remake of the 2011 French thriller Nuit Blanche.

Director Baran bo Odar, who would later go on to create the mind-bending Netflix sensation Dark, brings a European slickness to the Las Vegas setting, but the transition feels a bit bumpy. The plot is a classic pressure cooker: Jamie Foxx plays Vincent Downs, a cop who is "corrupt but for a good reason" (maybe?), who steals a massive bag of cocaine from the wrong people. Those people happen to be led by Dermot Mulroney’s Stanley Rubino, a man who looks like he’s perpetually waiting for a brunch reservation that’s twenty minutes late. To get his drugs back, the mob kidnaps Vincent’s teenage son, T. What follows is a frantic, one-night sprint through a casino called the Luxus, which I’m fairly certain is just a very nice Marriott with a few slot machines in the lobby.

A Cast Doing Heavy Lifting in Neon Corridors

What keeps Sleepless from being a total wash is a cast that is frankly overqualified for the material. Jamie Foxx can do "intense and bleeding" in his sleep, and he spends most of this movie clutching a stab wound while looking increasingly frazzled. He’s joined by Michelle Monaghan as Jennifer Bryant, an Internal Affairs investigator who is the only person in the entire movie trying to do her job. Monaghan is great at playing the dogged professional, though I found it a bit hilarious how many times she gets physically tossed through drywall only to bounce back like she’s made of rubber.

Then there’s David Harbour, appearing here right as the first season of Stranger Things was solidifying his status as everyone’s favorite grumpy dad. He plays Doug Dennison, a fellow officer whose motivations are about as subtle as a neon sign on the Strip. The dynamic between Foxx and Monaghan is the real engine here; they spend most of the film playing a violent game of tag across the casino floor. It’s also worth noting that Scoot McNairy shows up as the truly unhinged Rob Novak, bringing a level of twitchy menace that feels like it belongs in a much grittier, darker movie. It’s a movie that feels like it was written by an algorithm trying to describe a 'gritty' 90s thriller while suffering from a mild concussion.

The Craft of the Casino Brawl

Technically, the film has its moments. The cinematography by Mihai Malaimare Jr. (who worked on The Master, which is a wild leap in tone) leans heavily into the cold, clinical blues and searing whites of modern Las Vegas architecture. The action choreography is surprisingly grounded, favoring messy, desperate kitchen fights over the "gun-fu" that was becoming standard post-John Wick. There’s a particular sequence in a casino kitchen involving a lot of stainless steel and heavy cookware that feels appropriately heavy and painful.

However, the film suffers from a lack of identity. It wants to be a sleek, European-style thriller, but the script by Andrea Berloff (who wrote the excellent Straight Outta Compton) feels hampered by the need to be an accessible American blockbuster. Apparently, the original French version takes place almost entirely within a single nightclub, which creates a suffocating, claustrophobic atmosphere. By expanding the scale to a massive Vegas casino, Sleepless loses that sense of being trapped. It ends up feeling less like a desperate survival story and more like a very stressful episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation with a much higher stunt budget.

There are also some fun bits of trivia that pop up if you look closely. The film’s tagline, "They Got T," refers to Vincent’s son, but it was mocked mercilessly on social media for sounding like an advertisement for a vitamin supplement. Also, despite the Las Vegas setting, a significant portion of the movie was filmed in Atlanta, which is the ultimate 2010s cinema giveaway. You can tell because whenever they step outside, the "Vegas" air looks suspiciously like Georgia humidity.

Ultimately, Sleepless is the cinematic equivalent of a $20 blackjack hand. It’s a quick hit of adrenaline that’s gone before you can really process the stakes. It represents that specific moment in the late 2010s where Hollywood was still trying to figure out if these types of mid-tier action movies belonged on the big screen or in our living rooms. While the performances from Foxx and Monaghan keep it watchable, it never quite reaches the frantic heights of its French predecessor. If you’re a fan of "cop on the edge" tropes and have an hour and a half to kill, you could do a lot worse, but don't expect to lose any sleep over it once the credits roll.

***

Is it a lost classic? Not by a long shot. But as a window into the transition of the mid-budget actioner and a showcase for David Harbour before he became a household name, it's an interesting artifact. It’s the kind of movie I’ll likely forget I’ve seen until I catch ten minutes of it on cable in three years and think, "Oh right, the kitchen fight was actually pretty good." Sometimes, a 5.5 is exactly what you need on a slow Tuesday night.