Gus Van Sant tries his hand at creating a cinematic murder ballad with "Paranoid Park," yet another fascinating, if not entirely successful, digression in a career that has moved with surprising ease between such indie bellwethers as "Drugstore Cowboy" and "My Own Private Idaho" and big-canvas productions including "To Die For" and "Good Will Hunting."

Based on the novel by Blake Nelson, "Paranoid Park" stars newcomer Jake Miller as Jared, a high school student and skateboarder who, with his best friend, Alex (Gabe Nevins), decides to brave one of the dodgier skate hangouts in their home town of Portland, Ore. Partly narrated by Jared in a letter to an unknown recipient, "Paranoid Park" tells a disjointed story of what happened to him one particularly fateful night.

Working with cinematographer Christopher Doyle, best known for his work with such Hong Kong directors as Wong Kar-Wai, Van Sant films "Paranoid Park" with dreamy, mesmerizing lassitude (those swooping skateboards), as well as the subversive brio of something caught on the fly; at one point, Doyle films Portland street scenes on Super-8 film, then bars the subjects' eyes out, tabloid style. At other moments, Van Sant derives his inspiration from silent films. One memorable scene features the face of young actress Taylor Momsen as she reacts to unwelcome news, her wide-eyed expression resembling a cross between Lillian Gish and a Bratz doll.

Van Sant is such an assured filmmaker that "Paranoid Park" is almost inescapably absorbing; he has found a particularly engaging leading man in Miller, whose expressive, even painterly face goes from blank to angelic in the blink of a long-lashed eye. Ultimately, though, this might best be counted as minor Van Sant, exhibiting his characteristic flourishes and love for obscure music (the haunting final song is by little-known Alabama country singer Cast King) but little of the lasting emotional wallop that marks his best work. Still, even something as modest as "Paranoid Park" manages to reflect Van Sant's greatest strengths as an artist: his seemingly limitless fluency with his chosen medium and his willingness to tell even the oldest stories in bold new ways.

-- Ann Hornaday (March 21, 2008)

Contains disturbing images, profanity and sexual situations