'Haven': Shady Deals In an Island Paradise

In "Haven," Carl Ridley (Bill Paxton) is a rich Miami widower who has been trying to launder funds in the Cayman Islands' libertarian banking system. Alas, what he doesn't know is that the system is collapsing and that his "adviser," Mr. Allen (Stephen Dillane), has just lost his own fortune and is trying to find a way out and has been talking to U.S. Treasury officials about certain illegal deals he has set up.

What Mr. Allen, shrewd though he may be, doesn't know is that Ridley has been sleeping with Allen's secretary, so when she figures out the feds will soon be visiting Ridley, she cables him, and he escapes with his surly, sullen teenage daughter (Agnes Bruckner) and 28 pounds of luggage; that is, $1 million in hundreds. That's the situation among the haves: man exploiting man.

Among the have-nots, as the old joke goes, it's just the opposite. Shy (Orlando Bloom) is passionately in love with Andrea (Zoe Saldana), but even in the island's race-neutral youth culture, that's a big no because he's white, she's black; or because she's a princess, he's a peon; or maybe because her brother is insanely jealous of Shy and a gangster wannabe, looking for a way to prove himself with the island's big guns.

What "Haven" is selling is cultural vividness. Each detail feels right, from the patois of the gangstas to the proper rich-boy loafers worn by the rich boys, to the weird vibration of parents who look and act only a few years older than their children and may not be as sophisticated in the world of vice and the pleasures of the flesh.

The movie is small but sensational. I don't know what writer-director Frank E. Flowers might lose by trying to take his career international, but he has real talent.

-- Stephen Hunter

Haven R, 98 minutes Contains sexual innuendo, profanity and violence. At Muvico Egyptian Theatres, AMC Loews Shirlington and AMC Loews Dupont.