NO REST FOR CLUTTERED `SLEEPERS'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

More stars than there are in heaven descended on Hell's Kitchen to make ``Sleepers.'' Based on Lorenzo Carcaterra's controversial book (he says it really happened to him and some friends whose names he changed; others think it's pure fiction), this sensational stew of juvenile delinquency, child abuse and adult revenge attracted Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro (together for the first time), young superstar Brad Pitt, up-and-coming Jason Patric and ever-reliable Kevin Bacon.

And that's just the half of it. While De Niro, as Manhattan's most street-savvy priest, appears throughout the film, Hoffman, Pitt and Patric don't come in until halfway through, and Bacon - as the cruelest guard in the New York juvenile justice system - is gone by midpoint.

Not that you really miss them, since this movie is so overstuffed with incident, outrage, melodrama and chicanery, it could've headlined the cast of ``The Single Guy'' and still had about the same impact. As it stands, De Niro's terrific, Hoffman is underused and Pitt usually looks like he's about to cry. In the end, it's Patric's film if anybody's. Prone to smoldering in movies such as ``Rush'' and ``After Dark, My Sweet,'' Patric comes off a little more thoughtful than usual here.

He plays Lorenzo, known in the 'hood as Shakes because, well, he reads and writes. The character is basically journalist Carcaterra, and whether his tale is true or not, it is definitely some kind of whopper.

The movie's opening hour re-creates Lorenzo's childhood (young Joe Perrino is excellent in the role) in the Catholic, working-class Hell's Kitchen of the '60s. It's a mean place for Shakes and his friends Michael (Brad Renfro), Tommy (Jonathan Tucker) and John (Geoff Wigdor). Families are uniformly dysfunctional, the local mob don King Benny (Vittorio Gassman) runs the only well-paying after-school jobs, and dangerous pranks are a way of life.

If it weren't for chain-smoking Father Bobby (De Niro), these wayward altar boys wouldn't stand a chance. But even his cranky compassion can't help much when the boys accidentally drop a stolen hot dog vending cart down some subway steps and nearly kill an unsuspecting commuter.

They're sentenced to the upstate Wilkinson Home for Boys, where Shakes and company repeatedly are raped and beaten by Sean Nokes (Bacon) and a couple of other guards. Writer-director Barry Levinson (``Rain Man,'' ``Disclosure'') shows us just enough of this horror - it's still too much - to evoke the boys' desperation, fear and understandable lust to get even.

A dozen-odd years later, they do. Shakes, as mentioned, survives this trauma to become a professional journalist. Michael (grown into Pitt) goes on to become an assistant Manhattan district attorney. But Tommy (Billy Crudup) and John (Ron Eldard) have gone hard-core gangster by the '80s. When the two criminals encounter Nokes by chance in an East Side bar, they gun him down. Michael gets the case, which he conspires to lose with the secret help of Shakes, King Benny, Hoffman's substance-abusing defense attorney Danny Snyder and - if they can get him to lie on the stand - good old upright Father Bobby.

There's more - a lot more - but isn't that enough for one movie? Despite the fact that practically every scene in this long feature boasts at least one intriguing performance or issue or moral dilemma, it all rings pretty hollow by the end. It would be wrong to blame this on the questionable nature of Carcaterra's story - since when have movies relied on the truth, even when dramatizing real stories, for their effect? It's more the natural result of trying to make a straight-out revenge thriller a multifaceted social document at the same time.

``Sleepers'' (the title is mob slang for reform school kids) is the kind of movie that's engaging, even mesmerizing, from moment to moment. But its lasting effect is more like that of a half-remembered dream.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Sleepers'' (R; violence, language, nudity, child abuse, drug The stars: Kevin Bacon, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Patric, Brad Pitt, Joe Perrino, Brad Renfro, Minnie Driver, Billy Crudup, Ron Eldard, Vittorio Gassman.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Barry Levinson, based on Lorenzo Carcaterra's book. Produced by Levinson and Steve Golin. Released by Warner Bros.

Running time: Two hours, 20 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Three stars