‘Simple Men’ (R)

In "The Unbelievable Truth" and "Trust," filmmaker Hal Hartley forged a unique, deadpan wryness. Both films were obvious arthouse pretensions, but Hartley transcended the self-indulgence with witty turns of phrase. His characters languished around in a punk-generation, post-Beckett landscape, expressing themselves in existential one-liners, paragraph-sized aphorisms and amusingly jaded rejoinders.

This time around, in "Simple Men," nothing works anymore. Everything that was funny is dull and tiresome. The earlier films worked in offbeat counterpoint to meandering storylines. This movie is all zestless cacophony. To borrow loosely from one of the simple-minded rock stars in the comedy "This Is Spinal Tap," the difference between Hartley's previous work and "Simple Men" is the difference between good and -- um -- bad.

Here's the story, as much as it counts: Two brothers -- torn from the pages of GQ magazine -- live schematically different lifestyles. Robert Burke is a chiseled, petty criminal who acts and talks like Clint Eastwood and steals computers. His younger brother, William Sage, is similarly chiseled but a shy bookworm. After his girlfriend double-crosses him in the middle of a robbery, angry Burke comes home. He vows to take his revenge on the next blonde he sees.

Having nothing better to do (he read the script), Burke joins brother Sage in his search for long-lost, activist father John Alexander MacKay. The latter, a former shortstop for the Brooklyn Dodgers, became a political radical in the 1960s, and is believed to have bombed the Pentagon. He has been on the lam ever since. Following a string of clues, the brothers go in search of Dad, their journey taking them to Long Island.

They bump into blonde cafe owner Karen Sillas, who hangs out with epileptic Romanian Elina Loewensohn. While Burke and Sillas dance noncommittal rings around each other, kid brother Sage (who has also read the script) decides he likes the Romanian. He also begins to suspect Loewensohn may be connected to his father -- very connected. Loewen behold, she is.

There's little point going further. The rest is dull, Hartley-esque fare. Very little is edifying or amusing, as if some sycophantic fan of the director's tried his hand at hipstering.

Regular Hartley troupers Burke and Sillas and Loewensohn are disappointingly dull and uninspired. Apparently directed to speak ironically and in a monotone, they come across as lobotomized. As for the string of strangers Burke and Sage run into, they're similarly disappointing, from the gas pump man who insists on speaking stilted French, to the frustrated biker who punches the headlight of his motorcycle and says, "Nothing like a machine to make a man seem insignificant!"

Martin Donovan, whose wonderfully splenetic outbursts made "Trust" so amusing, seems to have lost his social standing in the Hartley coterie. Unrecognizable in a beard, he's reduced to a minor role as a would-be suitor of Sillas. He has to content himself with histrionic sputterings and too much absence.

The fact is, there's no one to watch in this movie. Everyone's out to lunch -- in front of the camera and behind it. "Simple Men" is one perpetual dead spot, full of aimless characters in search of a movie.