‘Simple Men’ (R)

Like the populations of TV towns Twin Peaks and Cicely, Alaska, the inhabitants of filmmaker Hal Hartley's Long Island are more apt to be Proust-conversant felons than the average Joe. So it comes as no surprise that the "Simple Men" of Hartley's third film are, at least to his way of thinking, supposed to be deep and mysterious. The truth is they really are as simple as sheep, tiresomely quirky relics of '80s alienation and its spawn, northern Gothic film noir.

This sophomoric, self-serving and platitudinous road movie concerns the relationship between a white-collar criminal, Bill McCabe (Robert Burke), and his studious younger brother, Dennis (William Sage). Told by their mom to look after each other, the brothers set off from Manhattan for Long Island in search of their father (John MacKay), a radical who is wanted for bombing the Pentagon in the '60s. McCabe Sr., a former major-league shortstop, has himself just escaped from the authorities. Practically everybody is either escaping from or heading for prison, but nobody is in much of a hurry.

Bill, whose girlfriend ran off with his partner in crime, is planning to get even by making the next blond woman he meets fall in love with him. She is the big-boned, cleft-chinned Kate (Karen Sillas), a seaside innkeeper whose husband is about to get out of prison. How about that? Bill finds that he's falling in love with her, while Dennis becomes intrigued with a mysterious Romanian epileptic who is staying on Kate's sofa. While the brothers dally, the law closes in and McCabe Sr. provides an unexpected out for Bill.

"Simple Men" has plenty of plot, but no design. There's a forced serendipity to the tale, amplified by the zombielike performances of the actors. Deadpan suits the cynical Burke, who played a similarly enigmatic crook in Hartley's promising first film, "The Unbelievable Truth." But Burke and the other cast members are only mouthpieces for Hartley, who writes aphorisms, not dialogue, like "All money's dirty money," "You can have what you want or what you need, but you can't have both," and "Falling in love is like sticking yourself in the forehead with an ice pick, but we keep doing it."

It just doesn't come any simpler.

"Simple Men" is rated R for harsh language.