Sleuth (1972 film) was considered unsuccessful in comparison to the original. Sleuth (1972 film) Sleuth is a 1972 British-American mystery thriller film directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. The screenplay by playwright Anthony Shaffer was based on his 1970 Tony Award-winning play. Both Olivier and Caine were nominated for Academy Awards for their performances. This was Mankiewicz's final film. Critics gave the film overwhelmingly positive reviews, and would later note similarities between it and Caine's 1982 film "Deathtrap". Andrew Wyke, a successful writer of crime fiction, who lives in a large country manor house filled with elaborate
Sleuth (2007 film) Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" wrote, "It's no mystery that 'Sleuth' is fascinating," observing that Pinter "has written a new country house mystery, which is not really a mystery at all in terms of its plot, and eerily impenetrable in its human relationship" and that "in 'Sleuth' what [Kenneth Branagh] celebrates is perplexing, ominous, insinuating material in the hands of two skilled actors." In contrast, J.R. Jones of "The Chicago Reader" wrote, "Director Kenneth Branagh has mercifully pared the action down to 88 minutes (the first movie dragged on for 138), but the final act, with its obscure homosexual