How much of the average American population would be entertained by watching two dull, lifeless middle-aged men play a chess game for 2 hours and 18 minutes? I can pretty much assure that number is pretty small. I personally love to play chess, but if you were to force me to sit and watch people do it, I'd feel like committing suicide after the first thirty minutes. That's about how I felt watching Sleuth. The entire movie is absolutely nothing but two men playing a dull game from the opening to the closing. There camera never leaves the house for the entire runtime. The most diversity in the entire movie is some minor clothing changes and some facial expressions. The entire movie is straight-up dialogue and nothing else. The entire movie is two long, dull scenes, with one scene change near the middle. If you have less of an attention span than the average person with Down syndrome, you'll be bored to the point of nausea long before the 30-minute mark. There is about as much entertainment value in Sleuth as there is in watching a tree stump rot, and that may even be an overstatement, because at least doing that you can use your own imagination. Here, the most imagination you get is two men, four walls, and an insane amount of bland conversation. If that describes what you consider an entertaining movie, Sleuth will keep you on the edge of your seat for sure.<br /><br />People would argue that the conversation scenes I reference carry the "clever plotting". In other words, the conversation scenes carry a cute, predictably plot-twisted story revolving around all the clichés that we've seen since the camera was invented. There is nothing clever about the plot. Sure it has a couple twists that will make you shed an "Awe, that was cute!" smile, but they're the same plot twists you've seen countless times. This is a clichéd murder story, folks. It's not some hyper-original idea. If you saw a single Sherlock Holmes episode as a kid, you've seen everything this movie has to offer. If the plot were truly clever or creative, it would do something new or different.<br /><br />The other problem with the plotif you even call it a plot; I don'tis that it's so predictable. No, you may not have any lead-ons as to who-killed-who or who's-dead-who's-not, but does it really matter? The outcome is always the same. You're always told the answer, and there's always only two options. It's the most basic immature plot line known to man. I've seen cartoons that put this plot to thumb-sucking shame. Who really cares anymore? I overuse the metaphor in my reviews, but a movie this unoriginal is like a joke you heard in kindergarten and then someone tries to make you laugh at that joke when you're 80-years-old. It's ineffective. It's pointless. Even if you force a laugh, you still feel annoyed.<br /><br />I understand this movie was made in the 70s. People will defend it by saying, "There was nothing like it when it came out!" and they're dead wrong. All their doing is defending their deep sense of nostalgia. In reality, this movie was just as unoriginal in 1972 as it is in 2009. And do you know what's sadder? Movies just like it are still being made, and they're still getting acclaim. It makes me sick. We don't need another paper-thing whodunit murder mystery with the same predictable results. What the mystery genre needs is maturity. Instead of pumping out more kindergarten level plot line movies like this, why not actually think of an, you know, actual STORY to support the mystery. That's something directors/writers obviously didn't get back in the 70s, and it's something they still don't get today. Instead of focusing on plots, why not focus on STORY? Overall, Sleuth is a complete waste of time. It has a couple of intelligent high-brow lines, but I could get those from my dying grandfather. Why do I have to watch a pointless movie to hear them? And, similarly, I could get the same predictable level of mystery of watching this movie from playing the Clue board gamealone. Why do I have to watch a pointless movie to do so? The more I think about it, I cannot find a single redeeming value in Sleuth whatsoever. It's long, boring, dull, pointless, lame, slow, uninteresting, paper-thin, predictable, annoying, pathetic . . .<br /><br />And most of all, Sleuth is exactly the same story you've seen hundreds of times, yet it expects you to be enthralled. Now THAT is a clever joke.<br /><br />0/10