Dust

It's too arty to cut it as a violent action pic and too gore-spattered to appeal to the arthouse crowd.

The chaotic, brutal iconography of Italian Westerns is put to novel use in this time-traveling, self-referential, hugely ambitious story of American brothers.

Manchevski has a rare visual intelligence, whether filming the face of a dying woman or Times Square's reflection in a windshield. But in reaching for a cubist style of storytelling, he sacrifices character and motivation.

A potent, assured and ambitious piece of filmmaking brought down by weighted dialogue and, playing Americans, the British actors Adrian Lester and Joseph Fiennes and the Australian David Wenham.

Its most impressive aspect is its visual style, patterned to some degree on Sergio Leone westerns. A picture this long and dense should work harder to be cogent and coherent, though.

Dust is a bust, a big bad movie of the scope, ambition and bravura that could be made only by a talented filmmaker run amok.

Lurches so wildly and meaninglessly between genres and time frames that all it creates is motion sickness.