‘Deep End’ to make a splash in awards season

In theaters

THE DEEP END, written and directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel. 99 minutes. Rated R. Now playing, Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville.

In “The Deep End,” Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s riveting, noirish thriller based on Elisabeth Sanxay Holding’s 1947 novel, “The Blank Wall,” and, in turn, Max Ophuls’ 1949 movie, “The Reckless Moment,” a mother’s love for her son is tested and proved in what is easily one of the best films Hollywood has put out in months.

It features a performance from the Scottish actress Tilda Swinton (“Orlando,” “Edward II,” “The Beach”) that’s so beautifully realized, it will push the relatively unknown actress straight into the American spotlight when the awards season hits later this December and into next year.

In the film, Swinton is Margaret Hall, a Lake Tahoe mother trying her best to balance an uncommonly busy home life, one that includes three self-involved children, an ill father-in-law, a Navy husband who’s never at home – and a corpse that’s recently washed up in front of her lakefront home.

Margaret knows the corpse all too well – it’s Darby Reese (Josh Lucas), the seedy owner of a gay nightclub called The Deep End who’s been having an affair with her 17-year-old son, Beau (Jonathan Tucker). Convinced Beau is behind Reese’s death, Margaret launches into action to protect her son. Secretly – and with a soccer-mom’s efficiency – she slings Reese’s body into a boat, drops it into the lake, ditches his car, and hopes that will be the end of it.

Of course, it isn’t. When a dark, dangerous stranger named Alex (Goran Visnjic) threatens her with a salacious videotape of Beau having sex with Reese just as Reese’s body is being hauled out of Tahoe by authorities, it becomes clear Margaret will have to go to unusual depths of her own to keep the illusion of her family together while privately fighting to keep her son out of trouble.

The result is seductive, rich and atmospheric, a gorgeously shot and acted movie that recalls the best elements of Chandler and Hitchcock. The twists and turns are unrelenting, but the reason the film resonates so deeply on an emotional level is because of Swinton’s Academy Award-worthy performance. Just beneath her cool facade is the worry of every mother’s nightmare: Her child and his future are in danger. When Margaret fully realizes this, there is nothing that can stop her from protecting him.

Grade: A

On video and DVD

ALONG CAME A SPIDER, directed by Lee Tamahori, written by Marc Moss, based on the novel by James Patterson. 103 minutes. Rated R.

Three-quarters of the way through Lee Tamahori’s frenetic adaptation of James Patterson’s equally frenetic novel, “Along Came a Spider,” a Secret Service agent played by Monica Potter makes one of those throwaway comments that nearly says it all about the experience of watching the film: “This is worse than killing time.”

Not quite, but as thrillers go, “Along Came a Spider” often is funnier than it is thrilling. It’s doubtful Tamahori intended to make a comedy, but when a film inspires giggles just when it means to ignite fear, well, that’s nevertheless what the director pulled off.

The film is a prequel to Gary Fleder’s 1997 film, “Kiss the Girls,” a superior movie that took Patterson’s best-selling pulp novel of the same name and turned it into a smart, fast-paced thriller. “Girls” worked for a lot of reasons, but mostly because screenwriter David Klass removed the hack from Patterson’s hack writing and made the novel’s implausible plot and stilted dialogue sing.

“Spider” doesn’t fare so well. Instead of liberating himself from Patterson’s book, Tamahori binds himself to it, presenting a film that mirrors Patterson’s novel in that many of the scenes and much of the dialogue seem underscored with italics.

Without giving too much away, the film swirls around the abduction of a senator’s daughter by a kidnapper named Gary Soneji (Michael Wincott). With Agent Jezzie Flannigan (Potter) at his side, Dr. Alex Cross (Morgan Freeman) must root out Soneji and find the girl before she’s murdered. Armed with a never-ending series of complications – not to mention too many loopholes and implausibilities to suit – Tamahori cranks out a film that misses the point of what makes a good thriller work: plausible twists wrapped around believable characters caught in the throes of an engrossing story.

Still, “Spider” does have its moments, almost all of which come down to Freeman’s performance as Cross. Transcending the thin material to turn in an excellent performance that not only carries the film, but which nearly saves it, Freeman, a gifted actor who deserves better, infuses “Spider” with a coolness and an intelligence it otherwise would have lacked.

Grade: C-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Tuesdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5” and Thursdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ-2 and WCSH-6. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.