In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

I've gone back and read reviews of this film to find out what others loved about it, to discover why it was considered such a milestone. Upon reading those reviews I gathered it was a milestone because it was unlike anything to come out of New Zealand at the time. That being said I still didn't find myself thinking it was a movie I'd choose to revisit.Sam Neill stars as Smith, a young man who as the film opens is leaving behind his wife and two daughters. It seems his wife has had an affair with a man named Bullen (Ian Mune) who is now moving in. Smith leaves behind his world and moves on to another area where he enquires about living on an island owned by a Maori tribe. Given permission as well as a dog they don't want, he does so and sets about making a new life for himself there. Among the things he finds in the house still standing is an old military radio.While this is going on there is unrest in the country. A fuel crisis has led to revolutionaries popping up to lead a rebellion and a police state brought about by their actions. It turns out that Bullen was a leader in the revolutionaries and this has put him and Smith's ex in jeopardy.Smith returns home one day to find a hole dug on his property. As he's trying to figure out what was in the hole a group of soldiers arrives and take him prisoner while ransacking his house. They find remnants of explosives, what was in the hole, and arrest Smith, taking him to a facility where he is left in a large basement. And ex-schoolmate now an officer gives Smith two options: a formal trial where he will be found guilty and executed or he can plead guilty and leave the country forever. Smith is then being transported when he escapes and thinks he's found safe haven working at a motel under a new name. Then Bullen shows and tells him the motel is run by revolutionaries and gives him no choice but to follow instructions. A group of soldiers is coming to stay at the motel and Smith is to give a signal at a specified time. I'll stop here with the description since that's most of the movie.I truly had a hard time with this movie for so many reasons. I could set aside the look of the film, a grainy bland look in all things seen from cityscapes to country sides. But it was more than that I found difficult. The acting felt stilted and put on. The story itself felt disjointed at best and confusing at worst. Why does Smith's wife take up with this revolutionary? What about the kids? Why does Smith seem complacent about leaving? Is he being set up from day one or a victim of circumstance? Most of the movie provides questions rather than answers including the ending. I'm sure there is a market for the film and in looking at several sites have read reviews that were favorable for the movie. I can't bring myself to do so, even though I'm a fan of the star as well as director Roger Donaldson. I know this was Donaldson's first feature but still I couldn't get into it and found it difficult to watch. Completists will want to add this to their collection though.Arrow, true to their desire to offer the best presentation possible, is releasing this in a cleaned up blu-ray format. Extras include a commentary track with Donaldson, Neill and Mune, THE MAKING OF SLEEPING DOGS a 65 minute making of featurette, the theatrical trailer, a reversible sleeve with new artwork by Sean Phillips and for the first pressing only in illustrated booklet with new writing on the film by Neil Mitchell, a contemporary review by Pauline Keal and the original press book.In the long run I'd say this is for fans and completists only.

Sam Neill stars, in his 2nd feature film, as Smith, a man who leaves his family when his wife takes up with another man, and moves to an island where he is the only resident. While he's on the island, political turmoil in New Zealand worsens and a form of martial law is declared. Smith is framed as a terrorist and arrested. Facing certain execution, he escapes and goes on the run, eventually hooking up with Bullen (Ian Mune), the man who had stolen his wife. This is the first feature made in New Zealand that received international distribution, and it's readily apparent why. Neill is a magnetic screen presence, and the film has the ramshackle appeal of the best small action films of the 70's. Warren Oates even appears in a small role as a US army officer.

As far as I'm aware, Sam Neill's first film - and what a start!Starring a Kiwi, directed by a Kiwi and packed to the gunwales with Kiwi talent, this is definitely no Hollywood hyperbole extravaganza.Its sole concession to the 'star power' syndrome is the presence of Warren Oates ("Dillinger") as an armed subversive type (I didn't dare to use the dreaded 'T' word!).The film is under the very capable guidance of the now-also-well-known Roger Donaldson, who was also responsible for another powerful home-grown effort, "Smash Palace". Impressionable youngsters like Peter Jackson may have seen this and decided their futures.Like Jackson's LOTR trilogy, "Sleeping Dogs" is filmed on location in New Zealand. As such, the sets and scenery give a fair idea of life in provincial and metropolitan NZ in the mid-70's (but there's no stunning vistas of the majestic Southern Alps here, I'm afraid)."Sleeping Dogs" is an adaptation of a story by New Zealand author C.K.Stead and pits an increasingly autocratic government of the near-future against a group of resistance fighters. Smith (Neill), very recently separated from a cheating wife, pretty much accidentally and quite reluctantly, gets involved with this group.One scene in the movie was (and still is) something of a talking point here in NZ because it seemed, in hindsight, so chillingly prescient - life imitating art.In the scene, a large group of protesters have clashed violently with unyielding, merciless, baton-wielding riot police; blood is flowing, injures are rife.Some five years after the film had been released, in 1981, the then-internationally-banned Springbok rugby team from South Africa were allowed to tour here, despite clamorous local and global opposition. New Zealand experienced the horrors and scarring of civil division. Wherever the Springboks played and also in the capital, Wellington, violence erupted. And it seemed to many of us at the time that the scenes that Donaldson had shot many years ago were now being replayed almost nightly on the news. Spooky.

Based on the novel Smith's Dream by academic C. K. Stead, Sleeping Dogs is set in a totalitarian New Zealand. Smith moves to the country to escape trouble but is framed by the state as a terrorist.The rest of the film involves his attempts to avoid arrest and his eventual fate.Released in 1977, the film possessed a poignancy for New Zealanders, who at the time viewed the then Muldoon National Government with some suspicion. A scene involving riot police in an Auckland street was a chilling portent of events during the 1981 Springbok rugby tour to New Zealand, and indeed on its release in the USA, some Americans confused the film's images with media reports of the tour protests.Notable for Sam Neill's role as Smith, the movie started a late 1970s revival in the New Zealand film industry, including movies such as The Scarecrow, Skin Deep, and Smash Palace.