Sleeping Dogs

Russell Crowe stirs this potboiler about a retired detective with dementia fumbling through an old case about the fallibility of memory. A bit chaotic, but effective.

Russell Crowe is at the stage of his career where he occasionally does bit parts in big movies, including being one of the few actors who’s been in both the Marvel and DC superhero franchises, but mostly headlines smaller flicks — “The Pope’s Exorcist,” and “Land of Bad” just a few weeks ago.

Some of them are good, some aren’t so much, but Crowe is always a treat to watch. He’s like the celebrated painter who’s past his grand mural days but dotes on little splashes of color in still life pieces. Crowe has moved beyond the megawatt star bit of his Hollywood journey and seems to just make movies he finds interesting.

“Sleeping Dogs” definitely is that, a potboiler suspense thriller about a retired police detective with dementia who goes fumbling around in an old case and finds all sorts of forgotten skeletons. As it happens, it was about the murder of a haughty college professor who was researching the unreliability of memory, and working out how to suppress or replace traumatic memories.

Directed by Adam Cooper (“Assassin’s Creed”), who also co-wrote the script with Bill Collage based on the novel, “The Book of Mirrors” by E.O. Chirovici, the film is mostly a showcase for Crowe as a guy who’s slowly been losing his identity and begins to put the puzzle back together piece by piece — and finds he doesn’t really like the guy he used to be.

Things get a little needlessly chaotic toward the back half, with some manipulative stuff included just to put the audience off the scent. And it’s the sort of movie where you know at some point there’s going to be a big twist, and for my part I sniffed it out early on.

I say this not to brag, and really more as a lament. When you watch as many movies as I do, it becomes like not being able to look at a beautiful piece of clothing without seeing the stitch marks. In this case I’d judge the filmmakers do a decent job of alluding subtly, and my guess is for most people it’ll be a pretty satisfying shock.

Crowe plays Roy Freeman, who lost his job as a cop 10 years ago in a drunk-driving accident and more lately has been suffering with Alzheimer’s. We get a lot of “Memento”-like cues early on: Roy’s apartment is festooned with all sorts of directions he’s pasted up during his more lucid moments, including “Your name is Roy Freeman” and “Put bread here” on the toaster.

Recently he underwent an experimental procedure that has a chance of restoring his memory synapses, and sports two huge scars on his shaved head. (Oddly, he looks a lot like Anakin Skywalker after he gets the Darth Vader helmet pulled off at the end of “The Return of the Jedi.”) He wears a knit cap to hide this, and his doctors have told him he should do games and puzzles to keep his mind active to give him the best chance.

So when an old case turns up smelling foul, he’s amenable to diving right in; also, he doesn’t really have anything else to do.

A man named Isaac Samuel (Pacharo Mzembe) is on death row for a murder he insists he didn’t commit. A group called the Clean Hands Project reaches out as Roy was one of the detectives on the case, asking if maybe he’ll consider taking another look.

He reconnects with his old partner, Jimmy Remis (Tommy Flanagan), who’s predictably dismissive of any suggestion they arrested the wrong guy. He’s become a bitter old drunk, and it seems Roy was his eager companion in hooch back in the day.

The dead guy was Joseph Wieder (Marton Csokas), an arrogant professor who thought he could conquer bad memories by replacing them with good ones through a combination of therapy and drugs. He was courtly and made a great host, the sort of guy who lounged around the house in a suit vest and tie, but had a way of treating everyone else like the help.

Karen Gillan — best known as Nebula in the MCU movies — gets to do a nifty femme fatale thing as Laura Baines, a junior collaborator of Weider and, it’s suggested, one of his many conquests. Her boyfriend, Richard Flynn (Harry Greenwood), was a promising young writer who got lured into their web of intrigue and then became obsessed with the idea that Laura was the real killer.

The story goes into an extended flashback where Flynn essentially becomes the main character, though the first time we meet him in the modern section he’s already dead. The whole sequence feels misplaced and takes us away too much from the meat of Roy’s journey.

(The novel actually was divided into three sections where Roy, Flynn and a reporter we never see were each the lead of their portion. If you can cut one guy out, you can do two.)

There’s also a subplot involving Wieder’s handyman, Wayne (Thomas M. Wright), that seems ripe for the cutting room floor.

It’s not so much that the machinations of the plot can get a little confusing as they detract too much from the main reason to watch: Crowe as this very damaged man, and not a particularly good one, trying to figure out who he is while digging into dead history.

People are drawn to third acts because nobody likes the idea of just drifting away. Based on “Sleeping Dogs” and his other recent films, I’d say Crowe is carving out a very memorable one himself.