Dangerous detective
Foxx plays corrupt cop who must rescue his son in ‘Sleepless’
LOS ANGELES — In “Sleepless,” opening Friday, Jamie Foxx plays a shady Las Vegas detective caught in an increasingly violent maelstrom of murderous events of his own making.
The thriller opens as Vincent Downs (Foxx) survives a deadly cocaine robbery that arouses the suspicions of an Internal Affairs detective (Michelle Monaghan).
When his only son is kidnapped, the mayhem that follows includes a severed tongue, fights and nearly nonstop shootouts — in a casino, dance club, street and parking garage — while the bodies pile up.
If Foxx’s character is not exactly Denzel Washington’s detective going to the very bad side in “Training Day,” it’s close.
Morally compromised characters, Foxx, 49, said, “are always more interesting to watch. They have those layers: Are they good? Are they bad? What’s the struggle?”
“Sleepless” filmed entirely in Atlanta, often with 12- to 14hour workdays.
Foxx recalled what he learned making Oliver Stone’s “Any Given Sunday” (1999).
“We want to make sure we never forget that we’re doing something that’s called ‘ make believe’ and it’s Hollywood. So you try to make it where this is something fun to do.
“Working with Oliver Stone, he was shooting a 16-, 17-hour day and there’s like 200 extras.
“The guys, the football players, were there eight hours straight, knocking each other’s heads off. You know how sets become — ‘ Man, the director! Man.’
“I could see that there was about to be a walkout. When Oliver called, ‘Action’ the guys ran and ran — all the way off of the field into the locker room. You see Oliver Stone standing in the middle of a football field like, ‘What just happened?’”
Foxx confronted the players. “They said, ‘ Foxx, man, we’ve been out there too long.’
“I said, ‘Yeah, but you’re out there too long with Oliver Stone. You’re out there too long with this movie that’s going to go down in history probably as one of the greatest sports films. At the same time, we’re doing something Hollywood; we’re not really hitting each other. So why don’t we go back and get things going?’
“Your director has a huge job. If you create the dissension, you create the ‘Woe is me,’ definitely everybody else will start to do that.
“It becomes all of our jobs to make sure that we keep it in perspective and get to the finish line.”