Sleepless Night (2011 film)

Plot

The film stars Tomer Sisley as Vincent, a police detective who plans to rob a pair of drug couriers when he finds that the cocaine he has is owned by nightclub owner and drug dealer Jose Marciano (Serge Riaboukine). Marciano kidnaps Vincent's son with the demand that he will be returned if his cocaine is returned. Just as Vincent finalizes the deal, he finds that his cocaine has vanished. The rest of the story focuses on him finding an alternate way to save his son.

Production

Actor Tomer Sisley took the role in the immediately after reading the script. Sisley performed all his own stunts in the film, stating "I think that it is always better for the movie because it allows him [Frédéric Jardin] to put the camera wherever he wants."

The dance club in the film was built for the film. As a requirement of being a joint Belgian-French-Luxembourgian production, the film had to be partially shot in these locations having the dance club scene shot in Belgium and the kitchen and parking scenes shot in Luxembourg. For the fight scene in the kitchen, director Jardin desired "a fight that would be interesting for people who don’t like fights in films. Not just for crazy people who like kung-fu movies." Sisley was familiar with martial arts and boxing and jujitsu worked on the choreography for the fight scene before having a location or the scene.

Release

Sleepless Night premiered at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. It was also shown at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival. In September 2011, Warner Bros. Studios bought the rights for an American remake. The film was released in France on November 11, 2011. The film was the 15th highest grossing film in France on its opening week and grossed a total of $298,383.

Tribeca Film purchased the American rights to the film for theatrical and video-on-demand distribution.

Reception

Sleepless Night was received very well by critics on its original release. The film ranking website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 96% of critics had given the film positive reviews, based upon a sample of 28. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 76, based on 11 reviews.

Remake

Two remakes were announced in 2015, an American remake starring Jamie Foxx and Michelle Monaghan with Swiss director Baran bo Odar attached to the project, and an Indian remake starring Kamal Haasan, the Tamil language film Thoongaa Vanam directed by Rajesh M. Selva, a former assistant in the actor's directorial ventures. The latter released on 10 November 2015.