For me Schrader is a second-rate director, and Light Sleeper is a poor attempt at a modern day film noir. Its attempt at angst-ridden existentialism renders the movie ponderous and dull whilst the dialogue is often unengaging and vacuous. Considering this film was released in the same year as Reservoir Dogs, one can see how writers such as Schrader were being seen as part of the Old Hollywood. I know these days there has been a volt face as far as this movie and Tarantino's debut are concerned with Tarantino laughed at as a fan boy director and Schrader now lauded as the master director he never was. But this effort is rather under-whelming. It feels like an average TV movie with a terrible soundtrack and unconvincing sets. Like someone has tried to remake Taxi Driver on a micro-budget.For me Schrader, with all his screen writing kudos, is an ineffective director, and Light Sleeper is a perfect example of his overrated directorial abilities.

Here's Schrader again, spinning his wheels in the same muck:Lowlifes In Torment, for the umpteenth time. This contraption has the same morbid pathology as 'Taxi Driver", an ugly POINTLESS movie about stupid ugly losers doing the things that identify them as a species, like grubs under a rotten log.By endowing his characters with fully differentiated personalities, motivations, ambitions even, God help us, Schrader betrays himself yet again as the perpetual adolescent he's always been.With the grotesque Willem Dafoe and Susan Sarandon, who reminds me of a drag queen on dope, this film should appeal to the depressingly sizable audience who love bad movies about lowlifes-in-torment by kings of arrested development---like Schrader, Scorcese, DePalma and their acolytes.NEWS FLASH: Narcotics dealers, wise guys, hit men and their like have the "inner lives" of venomous predatory reptiles. PERIOD. To maintain otherwise is to indulge in a despicable sentimentality. Which Schrader has made a career of. The inside of his head must be a dark and fearful place.

I was surprised to see this movie follow so closely the beats and phrases of American Gigolo in so many ways. SPOILER ALERT --- For Instance, the nice guy protagonist - feeling guilty about his profession, decides he has reached a moral high ground in his life and wants to change. As if by accident, he meets the woman capable of making him a changed man - in this case, it was an ex-wife. They rekindle their passions, only to find complications. Those complications, coupled with a homicide investigation (involving a client) makes life a living hell for our protagonist. In the end, both Gere and Defoe share that obligatory jail scene with their "loved one" claiming that they are "saved" by their love. Although the basic plot lines are similar, the movies are different in many ways. SLEEPER seemed to be less fleshed out in characterization. We never completely scratched the surface of the characters. All seemed to have more "submerged" beneath the surface than visible to the audience (which was frustrating) because we basically LIKE these people, even if they are Drug Dealers. Sarandon is superb in this movie - makes you wish she did more like this. But all in all, it mirrored American Gigolo so closely that by the time the final scene played out, I was laughing out loud at the obvious similarities to Gigolo. Not an homage - but a rip off, apparently.

Like "Prince Of The City", this is another great drug movie, with the greatest set ever built for a movie, New York City. Very few people saw "Prince", and I'll wager fewer saw this one. It has a cast of New York stage actors, who make the usual run of Hollywood anorexic barbie dolls, and Sunset Strip would be tough guys, look exactly like what they are, refugees from some "hysterical" wise cracking sit-com. I have to mention each one of these artists because they're so incredibly good. Willem Dafoe, Susan Sarandon, Dana Delany (what a performance), David Clennon, Mary Beth Hurt, Jane Adams(the looney sister from "Happiness"), David Spade, and last, but certainly not least Victor Garber. Paul Schrader wrote and directed, and if he never does another production, his mother can know that she gave birth to a major cinematic artist. The story can impress people as very hokey. Dafoe is a coke pusher. But he's very sensitive and loving, and is looking for a "better life". He's so guilt ridden as a pusher, he can hardly sleep. Oh, give me a break. But wait. With Dafoe I bought it completely. I was even rooting for him to get back with his former junkie lover Dana Delany. Delany and Susan Sarandon give major performances, Sarandon as a major supplier also looking to go straight as a cosmetic maven. This is a major manual on acting....look, learn, and enjoy.