Sleepers

The powerhouse cast insures interest in Barry Levinson's wrenching film based on Lorenzo Caracattera's supposedly autobiographical bestseller. Four friends from Hell's Kitchen are sent to reform school, where they are sexually abused by the guards. Thirteen years later, it's payback time. Two of them, now gangsters, meet by chance their chief tormenter (Kevin Bacon) and gun him down. The other two, a newspaper reporter (Jason Patric) and a prosecutor (Brad Pitt), conspire to rig their trial by hiring a patsy defense attorney (Dustin Hoffman) and calling upon the neighborhood priest (Robert De Niro) to perjure himself and provide a false alibi. Forgotten in this morally dubious exercise is that the accused are, indeed, thugs who terrorize the neighborhood, and, as the postscript informs us, will kill again. Better to ignore Caracattera's purple prose ("This is a true story about friendship that runs deeper than blood") and enjoy such colorful characters as Vittorio Gassman's neighborhood Don. It's also fun to watch De Niro and Hoffman effortlessly steal their scenes from that young pup Pitt. Optional. (K. Lee Benson)