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What’s better than a single Russell Crowe movie? A double, no make that a triple whammy of Russell Crowe movies!

So first off, on Holy Saturday I went to see, not The Pope’s Exorcist, but the recently released Sleeping Dogs, a sleepy little crime drama, that is almost saved by Crowe’s charisma. 

Directed by Adam Cooper, Crowe plays Roy Freeman, a former cop suffering from memory loss due to Alzheimer’s disease, but also undergoing experimental treatment involving electrodes in the back of his brain, which turn him into Frankenstein’s monster - no strike that and replace it with - which allow him to dive back into an old murder case.

And the clock is definitely ticking, as it looks like the supposedly innocent Isaac Samuel (Pacharo Mzembe) is going to be executed for a crime he claims he didn’t commit.

So Roy begins his odyssey, first meeting up with his former partner Jimmy Remis (Tommy Flanagan), who looks like he’s got something to hide, then disappearing off screen for about twenty minutes, reading the literary memoir of the recently diseased Richard Finn (Harry Greenwood), which could shed some light on the case Roy is investigating: the death of professor Joseph Wieder (Marton Czokas), who was clobbered to death in a fit of rage. (But of course he ends up investigating the death of Richard Finn as well.)

It’s during the period that he’s not on screen that I realized how truly charismatic Crowe is. The other actors do their best, but it’s Crowe who adds a much needed sense of gravitas to proceedings. 

And getting to Crowe’s other two recent movies, the great man is making interesting career choices these days. And why not? He’s already won his Oscar (for his leading role in Gladiator) two decades ago and as he’s turning sixty on April 7, so as far as I’m concerned he can do whatever the hell he likes.

Apart from turning up in big movies like Thor: Love And Thunder and the upcoming Kraven The Hunter, he turned future horror cult classic The Pope’s Exorcist (Julius Avery, 2023) in which he played the titular character, into something of a global phenomenon. While single handedly saving action thriller Land of Bad (William Eubank, 2024) from becoming just another war movie, as Air Force Captain Eddie Grimm ‘Reaper’, a remote drone operator with more on his mind than saving one of those Hemsworth brothers from some impossible mission in a faraway country.

There’s good stuff in both movies - the action scenes in Land of Bad are visually impressive, while The Pope’s Exorcist offers up some decent scares - but Crowe is the glue that keeps it all together.

Whether running errands in the supermarket while on the phone with his pregnant wife during a temporary work break in Land of Bad or simply driving around as Father Gabriel Amorth on his Lambretta scooter in The Pope’s Exorcist, Crowe demands our full attention and though nobody will mistake these movies for high art, they are both the better for his presence.

Much the same can be said about Sleeping Dogs, a professional though not exceptional looking package based on The Book Of Mirrors by E.O. Chirovici and adapted by Adam Cooper and Bill Collage.

There are some scenes where Roy Freeman goes about his daily business, trying to keep his life from falling apart, using messages posted on his wall to remind him who he is and what he’s doing, not unlike Guy Pearce in Memento, even though that movie is by far the superior of the two.

At other times, Roy moves around more freely, focusing on the task at hand, in a way not unlike Michael Keaton in the recently reviewed Knox Goes Away, which seemed to say that as long as you remain focused (and suspend your disbelief!) you can keep dementia at bay.

But since both Roy and Knox are in their own way fighting against ‘the dying of the light’ I’m prepared to cut them the necessary medical slack.

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Roy’s investigation eventually leads him to one Laura Baines (Karen Gillan), who was not just Wieder’s research assistant, but who also helped Finn land a job with the professor as an extra assistant.

Laura also looks like she’s got something to hide, but then again this is the kind of movie that makes everyone look either unreliable or downright suspicious, and the only way to get off that list is… well, I’m sure you’ve seen enough crime mysteries to know how it works. 

It’s all a bit silly, but I enjoyed it as a comfort watch, a two star movie that almost deserves that extra star because Crowe keeps reminding us that he, even with the added weight and grizzly bear look, is still a movie star, thank you very much. 

Note: Sleeping Dogs is out now in the United States, Belgium, The Netherlands, Romania and Argentina, with countries like Mexico and Australia to follow.

Both The Pope’s Exorcist and Land of Bad are on various streaming platforms.

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