The humble mid budget crime thriller is always a staple of the Netflix viewership charts, because it’s one of the easiest genres to lose yourself in for a couple of hours, and that appears to be especially true if there’s a big-name star in the lead role.
Of course, it helps exponentially if the movie in question is actually any good, otherwise it’s just a waste of everybody’s time. Sadly, Jamie Foxx’s forgotten 2017 effort Sleepless falls into that camp, at least based on a Rotten Tomatoes score of 25% and an audience rating of 37%, and yet the FlixPatrol rankings have it nestled comfortably in the platform’s Top 30.
Academy Award winner Foxx plays undercover cop Vincent Downs, who ends up embroiled in a conspiracy involving corrupt cops, internal affairs investigations and wanted gangsters, which is all sparked into life by a failed heist that ends up with his teenage son being kidnapped. But by whom, you may ask? If you don’t guess right away, you probably won’t even care.
The concept is neat and the cast is solid, with Foxx being lent support by Michelle Monaghan, Scoot McNairy, Dermot Mulroney, David Harbour and Gabrielle Union, but Sleepless is almost impressively bland and formulaic. One positive is that it only runs for 95 minutes, so it’s at least mercifully brief.
