I'll Sleep When I'm Dead is a fairly stylistic but surprisingly straight-forward underground revenge film that made me feel sleepy more than a few times. If you took an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit to Ireland and inserted the plot to the Patrick Swayze vehicle Next of Kin, you'd pretty much have the gist of this Mike Hodges (Croupier) outing. Despite a stoic (Clint Eastwood-like) turn from the compelling Clive Owen, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead is a mostly still-born thriller.

Rather than allow the audience to guess who the bad guy might be, we are shown early on and the rest is pretty much a tale of vigilante justice with nary a twist to spice up the stew. Clive Owen plays a former crime-boss/tough guy, who has for some reason left it all behind so he can live a low profile life out of a van and pursue a career as a lumberjack. He goes to the bathroom in a bucket and bounces from one logging gig to another because of his lack of papers.

Meanwhile his little brother (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) has been left to his own small-time devices as a drug-dealer who caters to and swindles high-society types mostly in an effort to get laid on a regular basis. His boldnesses soon arouse the ire of Malcolm MacDowell, who decides to give the upstart lad his comeuppance in the form of a forcible sodomization, which causes little bro to reflect a bit too much and take his own life in the tub. Thus Owen must return to his old stomping grounds to settle the score.

Upon his arrival he enlists the help of a coroner and a shrink who quickly suss out the reason for his brother's suicide, which leaves Owen only the task of finding out who the bugger is and stop by his old girlfriend's (Charlotte Rampling) place for a poignant say-hi before he gets a shave and a haircut and sets out to take care of business. I suppose this might read like a pretty blatant spoiler, but the fact is that the film tips it's cards straight away, leaving only the time and manner of the revenge to the audiences imagination.

The film does create a nice dark tone and offers a compelling anti-hero but that's about it. With a bit of a sub-plot and at least a minor twist this could have been a decent film, but unless I slept before I was dead none of these devices were ever employed and when the credits roll I was left unsatisfied to say the least. If you took Intermission and removed the humor, the suspense, the likable characters and the plot you'd have a pretty good idea as to what this film holds in store.