Collaborator

The writing is relaxed in the right places and heightened to a largely effective degree when it counts.

Both characters are riveting, and they even manage to earn most of the freight that Donovan loads onto his heavily ironic title.

Donovan, acting with ironic reserve, hands the movie to Morse, who makes his character the kind of crank you can care about just because he's so abysmally lost.

Morse and Donovan hold us rapt in this clearly told tale about identity confusion.

Hartley fans will certainly see his influence, especially in dialogue and movement that are so precise as to feel choreographed.

Collaborator has the tone and structure of an extended one-act play. Its uniformly wooden dialogue lends it the stage-bound feel of a tortured writing exercise.

The banter is playful and brazenly self-aware, but the ideas are a bit stale and don't lead anywhere emotionally substantial or narratively spontaneous.