I’ve been thinking for the past few days now, and there’s just no way to say with any kind of gentleness (or with the respect that an actor like Clive Owen deserves) how truly terrible a life event it is to sit through Mike Hodges’ hard-boiled thriller I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead. I was drawn to this movie, seeing it sitting there on the Blockbuster shelf, because of Clive Owen. I didn’t know who the guy was when I saw The Bourne Identity or King Arthur, which no doubt helped him enter my mind on a level playing field when I saw Sin City for the first time. The movie that was billed as a dark Bruce Willis vehicle ended up reminding us of Mickey Rourke (whose performances in the low-profile Masked and Anonymous and even the higher-profiled Domino and Once Upon a Time in Mexico went largely unnoticed, aside from his dog) and introducing American audiences to Clive’s particular style of stone-facery. So I picked it up.

Check it out after the jump.

Maybe it’s because I set my expectations really low or perhaps the trailers and TV spots I had watched looked like complete crap but I actually enjoyed myself with From Paris with Love. I know I even dogged it on last week’s Breachcast but I can’t tell you how delicious my words tasted while [...]