Sleeping Dogs

Better not let this Sleeping Dog lie, because it’s sure to rouse you.

Sleeping Dogs, New Zealand, 1977

Producer/director: Roger Donaldson
Production co: Aardvark Films
Screenplay: Ian Mune, Arthur Baysting, from the novel Smith’s Dream by CK Stead
Director of photography: Michael Seresin
Editor: Ian John
Art direction: Roger Donaldson, Ian Mune
Music: Murray Grindlay, David Calder, Matthew Brown
Production manager: Grahame Mclean
Camera: Paul Leach
Sound: Craig Mcleod
Assistant directors: Tom Binns, Tom Parkingson, Dag Lind, Mark Piper
Casting: Nevan Rowe
Props: Shelley Lodge, Trish Tennant
Costumes: Rosan McLeod, Lesley McLennan
Focus Puller: David Burr
Clapper Loader: Jan Kenny
Gaffer: Alun Bollinger
Boom operator: Andy Roelants
Assistant editors: Stewart Main, Annie Collins
Special FX director: Geoff Murphy
Special FX assistants: Andy Grant, Victor Moir
Continuity: Jackie Sullivan Sunt co-ordination: Jerry Popov
Stuntmen: Jerry Popov, Mike Wyatt, Miguel Wyatt, Peter Bols
Production assistants: Gaye Peacocke, Dorth Scheffman, Pat Murphy
Catering: Don Blakeney, Brian Pratt
Clothing by Amco

With: Sam Neill (Smith), Ian Mune (Bullen), Warren Oates (Willoughby), Nevan Rowe (Gloria), Donna Akerston (Mary), Bernard Kearns (Prime Minister), Raf Irving (Reporter), Cass Donaldson (Cass), Ian Watkin (Dudley), Don Selwyn (Taupiri), Melissa Donaldson (Melissa), Tommy Tinirau (Old Maori man), Bill Johnson (Cousins), Roger Oakley (Assassin leader), Clyde Scott (Jesperson), Laurie Dee (Special Sergeant), Davina Whitehouse (Elsie), Dougal Stevenson (Newsreader), Dorothy McKegg (Gloria's mother), Tony Groser (Gloria's father), Bernard Moody (man at wharf), Pat Hoff (Sergeant), Tom Binns (Carter), Bill Juliffe (Burton), Snuffles (the dog)
Specials: Ronb Cameron, Rod Collison, Ken Smith, Richard Moss, Norman Fawsey, Peter Bols, Chris Parkinson

Made in association with: Broadbank, Development Finance Corporation of NZ, Television One, with assitance from Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council

35mm, 103 minutes, PG

Watch the Sleeping Dogs trailer (8.06MB; 2.16 minutes)

World Premiere, 6 October 1977 at the Wintergarden Cinema, Auckland

Smith is a man on the run, running from a broken marriage. Accidentally caught between two powers – a repressive Government and a violent resistance movement – he becomes a man alone … hunted and hostile, driven by the will to survive.

“In my review of Wild Man in the June 25 Listener [1977], I decided that film wasn’t quite the fresh start the local industry was waiting for, but it came pretty close. So here is the real thing – a genuine made-in-New-Zealand feature which makes no bones about being constructed according to the standards of overseas films, a real local production. Interestingly, this makes Sleeping Dogs a slightly disconcerting work. After a non-stop diet of American, British, Australian and otherwise foreign movies, it is odd to be confronted by a film which embodies specifically New Zealand artistic concepts, a film reflecting the character of New Zealanders... If one wishes to treat Sleeping Dogs as a political thriller, then the lesson it teaches is that rural guerrilla war is out of the question in New Zealand, a message which is more relevant than it may look at first glance. The sort of activities that the SIS Amendment Bill defines as terrorism have doubtless occasionally occurred to various politically active people in this country, and the fact that Sleeping Dogs provides such a powerful disincentive to such notions is in itself an excellent justification for the assistance the RNZAF gave to the making of the film… Smith in particular, though unwillingly drawn into the revolution soon shows himself to be a downright liability to the cause – behaving foolishly and with poor regard to the safety of his fellows. It certainly is, for Smith is the hero; and furthermore I’d venture to suggest that his life-style and aspirations are not a million miles removed from those of Ian Mune and Arthur Baysting, who wrote the script, and of Roger Donaldson, who directed. It’s unusual to see so strong a criticism of one’s own social group articulated in a dramatic work.” — Stephen Ballantyne, NZ Listener, October 1977

“For a debut, Sleeping Dogs is precociously accomplished, betraying Donaldson’s still-photography background in its carefully composed frames. It pulses at a sprinter’s pace, perhaps learned while Donaldson did time making TV commercials… Sam Neill stars as Smith, an apparently shiftless Aucklander, a cuckold whose wife prefers the feisty Bullen. Humiliated, Smith leaves his daughters and wife for the road, stopping in a picturesque seaside village where he spots an island and swaps its Maori owners his car for the right to live there in seclusion. Smith, the guy from an island country, picks an even smaller one to reside on – only to learn that no man is an island. The local Maoris are revolutionaries who see through the government’s so-called state of emergency – the Prime Minister is using martial law to consolidate his power and stop the general strike – and to protect themselves they finger Smith as a local insurgent. Only because the Government believes him to be an enemy of the people can Smith’s inalienable rights be alienated. Martial law prevails, and Smith need not be told why he’s arrested, much less given a trial. On his island, Smith thought he was immune form the rages infecting the mainland. But when the government urges him to confess to crimes he didn’t commit, he begins to understand there is no safe place, and is jolted to consciousness by realizing that people get the government they deserve, that he elected these officials who are messing with his life. Like Hitchcock’s Saboteur, Sleeping Dogs is suffused with paranoia, mistaken identity, and breathless chase… In Sleeping Dogs Warren Oates plays Colonel Willoughby, an American Vietnam vet with no regret, imported by the New Zealand Secret police to conduct search-and-destroy missions in the picturesque countryside, leaving picaresque sex intrigues and defoliation in his wake. Willoughby and his snaky ways convince on-the-lam Smith that the government is indeed going to the dogs, that he can no longer afford the luxury of being a sleeping dog. Smith’s dilemma: the insurgents fighting the government tyranny are led by his nemesis Bullen, and while he can’t countenance the Government, he can’t ally with the guy who cuckolded him. Sam Neill, so chiselled and ethereal here, is an astonishingly subtle performer, giving Smith’s progression from schmendrick Thoreau to mensch Billy the Kid a particular pungency. His diction is on of unexpected cadences, making you think at the start that here’s a guy of unplumbed depths. Unconventionally and convincingly, Donaldson makes the case that there’s no such thing as existentialism, no personal gains to flying solo. Despite its obscure political context, better not let this Sleeping Dog lie, because it’s sure to rouse you.” — Carrie Rickey, Village Voice, 9 March 1982

Screenings: Sleeping Dogs screened with Phone (Sam Neill director) on 5 October 2005. It was chosen by award-winning writer-director Michael Bennett who selected "a bunch of film pairings that feature some of our best actors both in front of and behind the camera."; it also screened on 21 June 2006 as part of a selection by film maker and x-Film Archive staff member Rupert Reynolds-Mclean; and on 6 & 10 October 2007 to mark its 30th anniversary.