The discussion at the office one day was what kind of action movies we liked. “I like blowing-shit-up movies,” one guy said. “I could watch shit getting blown up all day.” One gal liked action movies with lots of sex in them. One guy liked action stars that beat the crap out of everyone and everything. I like action movies with lots of plot twists in them.

Sleepless Night is a movie that braids together just about every kind of action movie you can think of. There’s not so much blowing-shit-up, and practically no sex at all, but just about everybody in the movie shoots somebody else, gets shot, beats the crap out of somebody, gets the crap beaten out of him (or her – there’s one her, and she’s a tough little thing), and there are so many plot twists that by the end of the movie the story turned into a big, lumpy, doubled-over knot.

But ZOMG, what a story! I’ve never seen so many double-crosses crammed into an hour and a half of film time, or seen the bad guy get his comeuppance in such a subtle way. Subtlety is not what I expect in an action movie, but there was a surprising amount of it here in the way the various lines of the plot were spun out, then tied up. A fast, fun, engaging and enjoyable action movie, just when I thought the genre was all but played out.

Also, the leading man’s name is a stand-up comic named Tomer Sisley. How cool is that?