Sleuth (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1972)
*SPOILERS*
Enjoyable, but not as much as I hoped for several reasons. The main one is that the film thinks it's much cleverer than it really is: the first act is rather good, and the conclusion of it is truly surprising and well executed... I was a bit iffy on Michael Caine and started to wonder if I just didn't care for his performances as a young actor, but he got much better later on. Once the film shows its hand though, you're always a step ahead of Laurence Olivier's character, which makes him seem particularly dumb... I wonder, did Mankiewicz actually expect people not to recognize Michael Caine there ? If so, he was sorely mistaken, and I wondered for a bit if the whole thing wasn't about to go completely meta (as in: this is all a TV show or something) to justify that, but nope, turns out Laurence Olivier is just blind.
Given that, it's fairly clear what's going on and the second act becomes a bit of a chore. The third act works much better: Caine has more fun with it, and the social commentary aspect, though it's pretty heavy-handed, starts working much better. Still, Olivier is just too much of an idiot all of a sudden: in fact it comes to mind that I found both actors to struggle when they're being fooled... I don't know if that says something about them or me. Regardless, it ends up still being entertaining overall, but doesn't quite live up to its fun premise for me.
6/10