'The Loft': Stylish but too-complicated faux-Hitchcock mystery

The Loft is a stylish whodunit that struggles to stitch the label Hitchcockian on its inner pocket. But it's just a cheap knock-off - more like Hitchcopying.

The film is about five upper-income-bracket pals, all married, who share a loft for their assignations. It's where they bring their mistresses, girlfriends, one-night-stands, or, as a cop asking questions puts it, their "catch of the day."

The reason that cops (Kristin Lehman, Robert Wisdom) are asking questions is the discovery of a naked dead blonde handcuffed to the bed. And the guys? They were the only ones with a key to the place, the only ones who knew the alarm system security code.

Erik Van Looy's film is a series of two-on-one interrogations, with the police trying to get a confession from Vincent (Karl Urban), the womanizing architect who designed the building; Chris (James Marsden), a pricey shrink; the bookish Luke (Wentworth Miller); slovenly Marty (Eric Stonestreet); or unstable coke-head Phillip (Matthias Schoenaerts).

Flashbacks show the marriages, the origins of the loft, and the smirking way Vincent unveils his "present" to his pals.

Urban puts on his best lady-killer leer for this one, while Marsden gets to do lovesick (again), and Miller is cast as another quiet type who seems to harbor darker potential. The womenfolk are reduced to simple clotheshorses to be feared (the wives, led by an unsmiling Rhona Mitra) or desired. Rachel Taylor plays the bombshell who turns the shrink's head.

The script by Wesley Strick (Cape Fear, Arachnophobia) has gaps that no multitude of hazy-filtered sex scenes or tension-turning extreme close-ups can paper over. People know things they shouldn't, or don't know things they should. And by the time we've left the interrogation room, left the flashback to when the guys themselves try to figure out who did it before the cops arrive, it all sort of comes apart in an orgy of clumsy over-explanation that doesn't explain anything.

The quintet is well-cast, Urban is swell, the darkly-menacing Schoenaerts provides some fireworks, and the old-fashioned theatricality of it might appeal to some - even Hitchcock himself. But characters we don't care about, the suspense we don't feel? The Master of Suspense would hardly let his label be slapped on that.

The Loft ** (Out of four stars)

Directed by Erik Van Looy. With Karl Urban, James Marsden, Eric Stonestreet. Distributed by Open Road Films.

Running time: 1 hour, 48 mins.

Parent's guide: R (sexual content, nudity, violence, language, some drug use).

Playing at: area theaters.

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