In theaters

HIGH CRIMES, directed by Carl Franklin, written by Yuri Zeltser and Cary Bickley, based on the novel by Joseph Finder, 115 minutes, PG-13.

The new Carl Franklin movie, “High Crimes,” is one of those glossy, well-acted potboilers that doesn’t aim high enough.

Moments fly thanks to the talented cast, but since the film eventually steamrolls into a middling mess of courtroom cliches and dumb plot twists no actor can surmount, the experience ultimately is as weak as the poison in Botox – though without the smooth and pretty results.

The film, which Yuri Zetser and Cary Bickley adapted from Joseph Finder’s novel, stars Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman in their first screen pairing since 1997’s “Kiss the Girls,” but by the time the last reel has played, there will likely be those who wish Judd and Freeman had kissed up to a better script.

They certainly deserve it.

The film gets off to a promising start with Judd as Claire Kubick, a fierce, high-powered attorney for a high-powered law firm whose high-powered life is about to be hit by a high-powered wrecking ball.

During an innocent evening of holiday shopping in San Francisco, Claire and her sensitive, doe-eyed husband, Tom (Jim Caviezel), are ambushed not by the crowds in the stores, but by the FBI.

Apparently, Tom’s real name is Ron Chapman, something that shocks Claire to the sole of her Manolo Blahniks. Now, she must deal with the knowledge that the love of her life and the father of her unborn child allegedly went on a killing spree in a Salvadoran village in 1988, leaving nine women and children dead in his wake.

Is Tom … er … Ron a murderer? Or could it be that the killing was actually committed by Maj. Hernandez (Juan Carlos Hernandez), a shifty little man with a mysteriously droopy left eye who might, in the end, only be a decoy for the real person responsible here – Brig. Gen. William Marks (Bruce Davison)?

With the help of Charlie Grimes (Freeman), a recovering alcoholic with lapses in sobriety that add conveniently to the story but have zero grasp of real life, Claire fights the good fight in spite of being beaten up, harassed and threatened by an evil band of military personnel determined to bring her to silence.

Without a genuine surprise or, worse, a moment that doesn’t feel as if it was first distilled and then diluted for the approval of a test audience, “High Crimes” is actually rather low, a film whose cast proves the only heartbeat in a story that was dead on arrival.

Grade: C

On video and DVD

SPY GAME, directed by Tony Scott, written by Michael Frost Beckner and David Arata, 115 minutes, R.

Tony Scott’s “Spy Game” spans 16 years, from 1975 to 1991, although you’d never know it judging by the faces of its stars, Robert Redford and Brad Pitt, who don’t age a day as the film ricochets among the decades.

In the film, Redford is Nathan Muir, a weathered CIA agent whose retirement from the agency is interrupted when his protege, Tom Bishop (Pitt), botches a risky attempt to free a political prisoner (Catherine McCormick) from a heavily guarded prison in Hong Kong.

Now facing certain execution in 24 hours, Tom’s only hope is Nathan, who must outmaneuver several high-level CIA operatives determined to sacrifice Bishop so they can protect a pending trade agreement the United States is entering into with China.

Instead of focusing on this story, which gets off to a rousing start and hints at what might have become of Redford’s character in 1975’s “Three Days of the Condor,” “Spy Game” splits into shards of vignettes.

For the next 90 minutes, it reaches into the past to play a game of global pingpong, bouncing among the United States, Vietnam, East Berlin, West Berlin, China and Beirut in a series of extended flashbacks and flash-forwards designed to underscore the importance of Muir and Bishop’s relationship.

What’s created is a sort of reverse momentum, and while parts of the movie are lively and a few scenes are chilling, particularly a terrorist bombing that blows apart a Beirut high-rise, too much of the film is bogged down with reams of exposition – most of which keep it from going anywhere.

Grade: C+

Christopher Smith’s reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, occasionally on Fridays on E! Entertainment’s “E! News Weekend,” 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.

THE VIDEO-DVD CORNER

Renting a video or a DVD? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores.

Mulholland Drive ? A

Serendipity ? B

Spy Game ? C+

Bandits ? D

13 Ghosts ? F

Donnie Darko ? B

K-Pax ? B-

Life as a House ? C

Original Sin ? F

Our Lady of the Assassins ? B+

Riding in Cars with Boys ? B-

Training Day ? B-

Heist ? B+

Joy Ride ? B+

Zoolander ? C-

A.I. ? B-

The Last Castle ? C-

Sexy Beast ? B+

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

? F

The Musketeer ? D-

The Taste of Others ? A-

Don’t Say a Word ? C-

Hardball ? C+

O ? B+

Hearts in Atlantis ? B

Life Without Dick ? D

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin ? D

Ghost World ? A

Lost & Delirious ? C-

Atlantis: The Lost Empire ? C

The Curse of the Jade Scorpion

? B-

Lisa Picard is “Famous” ? B

Kiss of the Dragon ? B-

Rock Star ? B

American Pie 2 ? C+

Bubble Boy ? F

Glitter ? D

Sound and Fury ? A

Jeepers Creepers ? D

The Fast and the Furious ? B

The Glass House ? C

Greenfingers ? B-

What’s the Worse that Could

Happen ? D

The Center of the World ? C

Evolution ? D-

Two Can Play That Game ? C+

Moulin Rouge ? A-

The Princess Diaries ? C+

Scary Movie 2 ? D

Hedwig and the Angry Inch ? A

Jurassic Park III ? B-

Rush Hour 2 ? D

The Score ? B