Dischord

This premise is ripe with possibilities, but in an apparent -- and definitely misguided -- attempt to make his movie more commercial, Wilkinson has made the younger brother a murderer on the run.

A disappointing hodgepodge that fails to tie up its conflicting strands of family drama and suspense thriller.

Unfortunately, the mystery isn't mysterious and the characters are caricatures; the wintery New England landscape is the most striking thing about the film, but it's not interesting enough to justify watching it for 100 minutes.

Writer-director Mark Wilkinson gracefully elides backstories while arranging his converging narratives into a neat fugue, but the overall preciousness of his conception is suffocating.

The promising tension between Gypsy and the arrogant Lucian never amounts to much, and the climax is comically melodramatic.

The story is so crowded with incident and implication as to be both nonsensical and impossible to act, so the actors, when they are not bursting into fits of temper, smile mysteriously.

The only good thing about this on-the-fly, low-budget quickie is its Cape Cod setting and the in-focus cinematography of Ernst Kubitza. Very pretty. Otherwise, it is a speechifying bore.