Grown-ups eager to see just a good movie, plain and simple -- without Batmobiles, Abba songs or monkeys in space -- are urged to find their way to "Tell No One," a crafty, swift, subtly stylish thriller from French director Guillaume Canet.

Francois Cluzet, who could be a dead ringer for Dustin Hoffman's Paris cousin, plays pediatrician Alex Beck, who is embroiled in a brutal crime and then, eight years later, becomes re-embroiled. Pursued by legal and extra-legal authorities, Alex must rely on his wits as well as the support of his sister Anne (Marina Hands) and her lover, Helene (the terrific Kristin Scott Thomas), as well as some unlikely allies in the criminal underworld of Paris's less-than-chic precincts.

Canet adapts Harlan Coben's novel with supreme assurance and a tautly calibrated pacing, and he has assembled a superb, exceedingly attractive cast (which includes the lovely Marie-Josee Croze and Nathalie Baye). The film's engrossing narrative exerts a tighter and tighter hold, climaxing in a spectacular chase scene through the city streets (and one cafe). Canet creates a palpable sense of tension and foreboding that is sadly dissipated by the film's final, and fatally contrived, twist. But for an absorbing diversion as the dog days approach, filmgoers could do a whole lot worse.

-- Ann Hornaday (July 18, 2008)

Contains profanity, violence, disturbing images and adult themes.