Sleepers (film)
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Sleepers (1996) is a dramatic movie based on Lorenzo Carcaterra's novel of the same name. Carcaterra alleges that the story is true, although much evidence exists to contradict the majority of the events depicted.
Synopsis
Shakes, Tommy, Michael, and John are four childhood friends (played by Brad Renfro, Joseph Perrino, Geoffrey Wigdor, and Jonathan Tucker) living in Hells Kitchen, New York City in the mid-1960s. They grow up in an ethnically-mixed working class neighborhood that is described as a "place of innocence ruled by corruption," this essentially means while their neighborhood is safe for children, the people running it are often involved in illegal incidents. As kids, they work for a local gangster named King Benny (Vittorio Gassman) who has them deliver bribe money to the local police precinct on a weekly basis. When King Benny and their families are not watching them, they are often under the eye of Catholic priest Father Bobby (Robert De Niro) who himself was a juvenile delinquint turned priest. As described by King Benny, he would have been a great hitman had he not gone to become a priest. The boys see Father Bobby as another Father figure and respect him deeply. As the events of the 60s occur, their neighborhood remains locked in time as the boys realize that all of these radical change groups protected by money and upper class standing could care less about the inhabitants of their neighborhood. On a hot summer day, the boys see a Greek hot dog vendor whom they and the other neighborhood kids don't respect and tend to rip off. They decide to play a prank which involves stealing the hot dog cart. A near-fatal accident occurs which results in the hot dog cart falling down a subway stairway nearly killing a man at the bottom of the subway. The four of them are sentenced to time periods from 12 to 18 months at the Wilkinson Home for Boys in Upstate New York told by the judge that it was only Father Bobby's intervention that kept them from a longer and harsher sentence.
Upon arriving to the Wilkinson home, they realize that they are not as fit for prison as the rest of the kids there. As described in the novel, the majority of the offenders, Black and Puerto Rican youths are serving time for violent crimes related to drugs. The rest of the inmates, mainly Italian and Irish kids like themselves are in mainly for assault charges and gang activity while in the company of older men. These four do not belong to a street gang and were seen in their neighborhood as relatively good kids whom the adults many of whom served time in these facilities did not think would end up in prison. As a result, the guards led by Nokes ((Kevin Bacon), Ferguson (Terry Kinney)), Styler (Lennie Loftin), and Addison (Jeffrey Donovan) a group of local sadistic bigots not much older than the inmates themselves readily abuse the Hells Kitchen quadrant as they do not respect them as violent criminals who could react with deadly force. One night the four guards take them to the basement where they sexually abuse the four boys as an assertion of power and authority over the youths. Throughout their stay, the guards continue to abuse them and other inmates physically and sexually often while drunk over any possible infraction. When Father Bobby visits, he explains to them that he and his best friend served time at Wilkinson and his best friend now at Attica was killed internally by Wilkinson and warns them that the same will happen to them if they let the place get to them. When the guards put together a team of inmates to play them in a touch football game, the four are selected and think that they can use this as an opportunity to get back at the guards physically. They ask an inmate Rizzo (Eugene Byrd), a fearful Black inmate on the team who the guards tend to avoid to lead the team in assaulting the guards during the game. This goes through and the inmates win but the guards out of revenge toss them into solitary confinement and kill Rizzo as they are locked away. During the remainder of their stay, they are left hopeless and fear every night during which they stay at Wilkinson. Shakes is the first one released after ten months and on the night of his release, the guards as explained in the book abuse them worse than they have ever been abused while in Wilkinson.
Years later, two of the boys John and Tommy (played by Ron Eldard and Billy Crudup), now gangsters, come across Nokes in a restaurant. As the two of them have both hardened by prison and are currently in an Irish gang in West Manhattan, they don't think twice and murder him. The other two boys (played by Jason Patric and Brad Pitt) enlist the help of their childhood friend (Minnie Driver), Father Bobby, a local cop named Nick Davenport (Daniel Mastrogiorgio), King Benny, and an alcoholic lawyer (Dustin Hoffman) to acquit their friends and expose the actions of the guards and abuses at the center. Michael (Pitt) is the assistant District Attorney and picks this case to secretly lose as a means of getting revenge on the Wilkinson home. Guard Ferguson now on Long Island is discredited as a character witness in the courtroom, Guard Styler now a corrupt NYPD officer is arrested by the IA division led by Davenport, and Guard Addison is killed by Black gangsters led by Rizzo's Brother Little Caesar (Wendell Pierce) after hearing the truth about how his brother really died in prison from King Benny. In the courtroom after a long talk with Shakes, Father Bobby lies on the stand about where John and Tommy were the night of the shooting. Father Bobby claims they were at a Knicks game with him and as a result, they are found not guilty as the jury does not doubt the word of a catholic priest. From there, the boys are reunited for a last time in which they all state their love for each other as friends.
Truth vs. Fiction
Though Carcaterra claims that the book is a true story, much evidence exists to prove that the majority of it, if not all of it, is fictional:
- No records exist for any such trial even remotely similar to the one depicted in the film.
- Carcaterra's school records show that between the ages of 5 and 14, he only missed a total of three weeks worth of school; according to the book, he was incarcerated in a juvenile detention center for one year when he was 13, and he would not have had any school records for this period.
- No records exist for any of the other three boys mentioned in the book.
- No murders, as described in the book's closing chapters, took place on the dates specified.
- It may be of interest to think that Carcaterra possibly changed names, dates, and his personal story in order to keep the overall truth hidden, either for his own benefit or for the protection of anyone involved in real life.
- In the book Carcaterra states that he did change names, dates and places to protect the identities of those involved. As an example, he states that he moved the location of the trial to Manhattan. The book also explains that school records were altered to show that the boys were in school during the time they were actually in Wilkinson. It is not surprising that only records for Carcaterra exist as his is the only real name used. Carcaterra has stood by his claim that everything he wrote was true, but he has made it difficult to confirm this truth.
See also
- Pedophilia
- Pedophilia and child sexual abuse in fiction
- Pedophilia and child sexual abuse in films
- Child sexual abuse
External link
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