Adoration

A profound and provocative exploration of cultural inheritance, communications technology and the roots and morality of terrorism, the Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan nimbly wades into an ideological minefield without detonating an explosion.

Shot on beautifully utilized film but employing images vividly from the Internet and mobile phones, it's an examination of the power that false ideas may have on people's imagination and beliefs when they are repeated over and over.

Though there are moments when the drama turns into intellectual debate, the film is also emotional, moving with a fluid, mounting tension and moments of anguish and strange, startling humour.

Watching Adoration is like juggling three tennis balls, a porcupine, and a graduate thesis, but eventually it finds a unifying theme, that of tolerance melting away racial and intergenerational hatreds.

Once all the pieces of the story are assembled, the whole thing turns out to be not that big of a deal.

Adoration, despite a family resemblance to some of his finest work ("The Sweet Hereafter," "Ararat"), is Egoyan at his worst. The movie is slow and airless, with a script so weak one wonders why Egoyan bothered to film it.

Despite strong turns, it feels little more than an Egoyan lecture on Serious Stuff; lots to talk about, little to enjoy.