YMMV / Sleepers

• Award Snub: Given its All-Star Cast, subject matter, and solid ratings it seems a little strange that the only Oscar nod it got was for the original score. The fact that the movie's claim to being factual was heavily challenged could perhaps be one of the reasons why. By now the film is largely forgotten but those who do watch it usually praise it (unless they deride it because of the factual claim).

• Catharsis Factor: After seeing Nokes abuse the main characters both physically and sexually, and then remorselessly rubbing it in both John and Tommy's faces after they confront him again as adults, seeing them both gun the bastard down in cold blood is absolutely fulfilling to watch.

• Complete Monster: Sean Nokes, the sadistic security guard at the juvenile home the four main boys are sent to, is an example of the worst corruption going unnoticed by the system. Nokes, as leader of his own small gang, wastes no time in proving himself a cruel bully who forces a boy to eat food off the floor when he fails to show the proper deference. He soon takes the boys and together with his men regularly beats and rapes them. When the boys win a football match against the guards, Nokes has them violently beaten and thrown in solitary, with the "star player" dying of the injuries inflicted. When confronted years later by his victims, he feebly protests he was only trying to "toughen" them, to which one of his former victims sarcastically answers that Nokes simply liked lording over, beating, and raping boys.

• Harsher in Hindsight: Shakes's line about how a marriage could only end when someone died, in an already tragic scene, becomes even sadder with the passing of the real Lorenzo Carcaterra's wife in 2013. Poor guy can’t catch a break!

• Heartwarming Moments: Father Bobby, King Benny, and Fat Mancho all caring that much for a group of four boys they aren't related to.

• Jerkass Woobie: John and Tommy later in life become cold-blooded killers who are guilty of the murder they commit. However, the sheer amount of sexual abuse they put up with during their childhoods can't make them anything but sympathetic.

• Narm: When adult Shakes is waiting in the communion line and has a Held Gaze with Father Bobby. What would be a great moment of tension is left unintentionally comic by Shakes holding his mouth open for at least ten seconds waiting for a communion wafer.

• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Father Bobby, it turns out, spent time at Wilkinson's, and he knows what it's like to be there. His experiences were bad enough that they turned his best friend into a hardened criminal, yet not even he could imagine what the four boys would have to suffer.
  • Shakes's father spent time in prison and knows what it's like. His utter terror, when his son is sentenced to a year in a juvenile facility, says it all.
  • Imagine pulling a fairly innocent prank that goes horribly wrong. Then not only having to live with the guilt but being sent away from your family - as a preteen - to spend at least a year in jail. Then imagine being at that jail and finding yourself at the mercy of a group of sadistic guards who rape and torture you and your best friends repeatedly.
  • The isolation cells.

• Retroactive Recognition:
  • John Slattery plays the English teacher in prison.
  • Jeffrey Donovan from Burn Notice plays one of the guards at Wilkinsons.
  • Billy Crudup made his film debut here and would become better known in the years after.

• Spiritual Predecessor: It can be viewed as such for Spotlight in that it deals with sexual abuse of young boys carried out by men in a position of power, which is covered up by those in the know. It helps that Billy Crudup appears as one of the adult sleepers in this movie and as an attorney in Spotlight. A major dissimilarity between the two films, however, is that in Sleepers the catholic church is a safe haven and a place of comfort and security, and the priest they interact with the most is a protective father figure.

• Spiritual Successor: The way Michael and Shakes communicate during the trial, and the secrecy involved with the whole operation, brings to mind All the President's Men. Roger Ebert even compared the two of them.

• Tear Jerker:
  • John appearing in Shakes's cell with blood running down his legs, desperate and nearly broken after another rape, willing to kill Ferguson to get the torture to stop. John being the gentlest one of the group.
  • The scene where Shakes tells Father Bobby and Carol what took place at Wilkinson's.
  • While praying at church, Shakes has a flashback of him being raped with a baton while being forced by the Wilkinson's guards to pray.
  • Shakes's father's reaction to his son being sentenced to a juvenile facility. Granted, he’s not exactly the best guy by any means, as he verbally and physically abuses his wife but it’s still painful to see him completely in tears. It's heavily alluded to throughout the movie that he knows what his son will be subjected to — only what he thought he knew wasn't half as bad as what really happened.^note The book mentions that Shakes found out later in life that it was for killing his first wife
    Mr. Carcaterra: He's just a kid! He shouldn't have to do time! Nobody in this family should have to do time! I did enough time for everybody!

• Values Dissonance: One reviewer accused the movie of being homophobic since sexual abuse done by men on underage boys is emphasized as the biggest crime, trumping murder even. Other viewers, however, note that it's more accurate to say that twelve-year-olds being raped by grown-ups is the biggest crime, not the aspect of sexuality. In one sexual abuse scene, indeed, it is hinted that the guards would be doing the same thing to their victim's mother if she was available.

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