General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20265 min read

Sleeping Dogs (2024 film)

Sleeping Dogs is a 2024 crime thriller directed by Adam Cooper, in which Russell Crowe plays Roy Freeman, an ex-homicide detective with Alzheimer's disease who reopens a decade-old murder case he can no longer remember. The film is an adaptation of the 2017 novel The Book of Mirrors by the Romanian author E.O. Chirovici, and it was released in limited US theaters on March 22, 2024 by The Avenue.¹^•² It is unrelated to the 2012 video game of the same name, whose own film adaptation is a separate project.³

Key fact	Detail
Director / writers	Adam Cooper's directorial debut; screenplay by Cooper and Bill Collage, from The Book of Mirrors by E.O. Chirovici⁴
Lead cast	Russell Crowe (Roy Freeman), Karen Gillan (Laura Baines/Elizabeth Westlake), Marton Csokas (Dr. Joseph Wieder), Tommy Flanagan (Jimmy Remis)⁵
US release	Limited theatrical release March 22, 2024; digital release April 9, 2024; distributor The Avenue¹
Rating and runtime	Rated R for sexual content, language, and violence/bloody images; runtime reported as 111 minutes by Paramount and 112 minutes by the BBFC⁵^•⁶
Box office	Worldwide gross of $1,965,251 per The Numbers, or $2,129,080 per Box Office Mojo, all from international markets⁷^•⁸
Critical reception	44% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 41 reviews, with a 79% audience Popcornmeter score; a Metascore of 45 on Metacritic from 10 critics¹^•⁹
Production countries	Australia and the United States, with Screen Australia listing the title among its 2022–23 slate¹⁰

Spoilers

Plot

Roy Freeman is a retired homicide detective living with memory loss caused by Alzheimer's disease, keeping his apartment functioning with handwritten reminder notes. He is drawn back into the murder of Joseph Wieder, a psychology professor killed ten years earlier, after being approached about the case of Isaac Samuel (Pacharo Mzembe), a death row inmate whom Freeman arrested and who now proclaims his innocence. Freeman enlists his former partner Jimmy Remis (Tommy Flanagan) to help revive the investigation.⁵^•¹¹

The re-investigation is complicated by Richard Finn (Harry Greenwood), a recently deceased writer whose unpublished manuscript about the Wieder murder becomes a key piece of evidence, and by Laura Baines (Karen Gillan), a brilliant student who was involved with both Finn and Wieder. As Freeman's treatment partially restores his memory, he uncovers buried secrets and betrayals that connect the case to his own past.¹²^•¹³

Adaptation from the novel

Chirovici's novel, published by Atria in 2017, follows a literary agent who hires a reporter to investigate a manuscript connected to an unsolved murder committed 25 years earlier; a Kirkus critic called the book "a smart, sophisticated murder puzzle."² Producer Pouya Shahbazian sent Cooper a pre-publication galley in 2016, and Cooper and Collage optioned the book and wrote the script on spec.¹⁴

The screenwriters made one structural change that shapes the whole film: in the novel, Roy Freeman is not introduced until the last third of the book, but the film reframes the entire narrative through Freeman's eyes, telling a single experience of a man bereft of memory who reinvestigates his own past case.¹⁴ Reviewers noted the resulting resemblance to Christopher Nolan's Memento, another amnesia-driven detective thriller, though the film's source is the Chirovici novel.¹²

Production and release

Cooper was known before this film as a screenwriter on Tower Heist, Exodus: Gods and Kings, Assassin's Creed, and Allegiant; Sleeping Dogs was his first film as director.⁴ Crowe's casting was reported in September 2022, with filming planned for the following year.² The film was produced by Nickel City Pictures with support from Screen Australia and Film Victoria, and its production companies included The Avenue, Highland Film Group, and Nickel City Productions.¹⁰^•¹²

The film opened in limited US theaters on March 22, 2024, with international releases beginning March 20–21 in Belgium and the Netherlands, and became available digitally on April 9, 2024.¹^•⁷ It reached Australian cinemas on August 1, 2024 through Rialto.¹³^•¹⁵ Later home-video classification by the BBFC in September 2024 noted scenes of strong sex and strong bloody violence alongside the Alzheimer's storyline.⁶

Reception

Critical response was mixed to negative, with Crowe's performance the most consistently praised element. The Rotten Tomatoes critics' consensus reads, "Forgetting to give Russell Crowe a compelling mystery to solve, Sleeping Dogs lies down rather than stands on its own," and the film scored 44% on the Tomatometer against a 79% audience score.¹ On Metacritic it received a Metascore of 45, classified as mixed or average, from 10 critic reviews.⁹

Reviewers divided over the film's style. Nikki Baughan of Screen Daily called it "a clunky, overwrought thriller which leans heavily on cliche," while Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave it 3 of 5 stars, describing "crazy and almost dreamlike convolutions of plot" whose "silliness is enjoyably dramatised."¹²^•¹³ Australian critics were warmer: Stephen Romei of The Australian called it Crowe's best film in a while at 3.5/5, and Sandra Hall of the Sydney Morning Herald gave 4/5, praising "an engrossing plunge into the film noir tradition."¹ Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that Crowe's performance as "a man haunted by demons he can't quite remember" holds the film together to the end.⁹

Commercially, the film earned modest returns: The Numbers records $1,965,251 worldwide, all international, while Box Office Mojo lists $2,129,080; neither source records a domestic theatrical gross.⁷^•⁸

References

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026