CRIMES OF THE HEART

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

When Lorenzo Carcaterra published Sleepers last year, he said his book--about brutal child abuse in a New York reform school in the 1960s and the long-delayed but satisfying revenge four of the victims gain on their tormentors--was a true and, indeed, autobiographical tale. His story, however, did not check out to the satisfaction of investigating journalists, who could find no hard evidence to support his claim. The author's defense was that he had changed names and details to protect his pals.

Undeterred by the minor literary scandal that ensued and obviously a sucker for a rattling good (if wildly improbable) yarn, writer-director Barry Levinson proceeded with his screen adaptation of the story. In doing what a filmmaker must do--strip a book to its narrative essence--he has perhaps resolved whatever controversy may still cling to Carcaterra's work. We now see clearly that the author's primary source wasn't life but movies.

Lots of movies, it turns out. In the first act we meet four boys growing up in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen. They talk tough, engage in petty crime and swim in the river like the Dead End Kids of yore. They play basketball under the tutelage of a kindly priest, just like the gang in Angels with Dirty Faces, only with Robert De Niro playing the Pat O'Brien part.

When one of their pranks misfires, the four are sent to the Wilkinson Home for Boys, and we hear the doors of a new genre, the prison picture, clang shut. A group of guards led by Sean Nokes (Kevin Bacon at his slimiest) subject them to beatings and gang rapes. These ordeals are discreetly handled by Levinson, who makes us fully aware of their horrors without becoming graphically realistic.

A decade later, the two boys most damaged by the torture--they've become cold professional killers, played by Billy Crudup and Ron Eldard--encounter Nokes in a bar, blow him away and blow us into yet another fictive mode, the improbable legal thriller. Here in Grisham country we discover that the other two protagonists have gone straight: Michael (Brad Pitt) is an assistant D.A. assigned to prosecute the case, while Carcaterra, nicknamed Shakes (Jason Patric), is an aspiring newspaperman. Michael intends not only to lose the case against his old pals but also to use it to wreak vengeance on Nokes' former accomplices, all of whom have gone on to respectable lives. Shakes' job is to persuade their priestly mentor to supply an alibi for the murderers by lying on the witness stand. This offers amusingly gainful employment for Dustin Hoffman as a bumbling defense lawyer. It is all legally preposterous. But Levinson is a slick craftsman, his actors are insinuatingly real, and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus casts a disarmingly believable light on these proceedings. At some low, what's-next level, Sleepers works like, well, gangbusters.

--By Richard Schickel