"Murder by Numbers" poses a cinematic question: What would happen if we reimagined the Leopold and Loeb murders with a contemporary reference to Columbine, vibe, and throw in just a hint of 19th-century French poetry for a homoerotic frisson?
Ladies and gentlemen, we have our answer. Not much.
Sandra Bullock plays Cassie Mayweather, a cynical but foxy homicide detective who trolls for perps in a town that looks as if it's been torn from a Coastal Living centerfold. As "Murder by Numbers" opens, Cassie and her new partner, Sam (Ben Chaplin), are called to a particularly gruesome murder site. A young woman -- just about Cassie's age -- has been stabbed, wrapped in plastic and thrown over a cliff. Only a boot print, a few fibers and a puddle of vomit remain to help the detectives track down the killer. Coastal Dying, anyone?
After a series of false starts and dead ends, the boot print finally leads the team to the local high school and one Richie Haywood (Ryan Gosling), the kind of wealthy, entitled and perpetually smirking kid who grows up to be president if he doesn't get put away first. Cassie has a strong hunch that Richie is lying about his boots (he claims that they were stolen from his locker), and she eventually discovers that he does indeed have his share of secrets, especially an intense friendship with Justin Pendleton (Michael Pitt), a budding Nietzschean who somehow embodies both the decadent tastes of Rimbaud and the killer instincts of Rambo.
Cassie keeps her eye on these two even when a suspect is identified and Sam threatens to find another partner. But to be fair, he has his reasons: It turns out that Cassie is something of a man-eater, the kind of woman who seduces with abandon and abandons with abandon. No sooner has she bedded poor Sam than she's told him to scram: All that's missing are a wad of cash, a patronizing pat on the head and the suggestion that he go buy himself something nice.
"Murder by Numbers" proceeds, well, by the numbers, as Cassie trusts her gut, solves the crime, charms the partner and, because every girl needs a juicy subplot, deals with her own mysterious past, which has some discomfiting resonances with the murder she is solving. All of these plot points are presented and fleshed out with consummate efficiency by director Barbet Schroeder, who has wisely enlisted the great cinematographer Luciano Tovoli to lend the film's central California locations a lush, lustrous glow.
Bullock and her tough-but-cute persona are ideally suited to Mayweather, who approaches the world with elbows defensively out (unless one is lifted in the course of having a Scotch). Chaplin is suitably bland but appealing as the male ingenue who doesn't know quite what to make of being a boy-toy. Both Gosling (last seen as the Jewish skinhead in "The Believer") and Pitt infuse their nihilist dabblers with credible proportions of innocence and pathology.
But even with so many elements to its credit, "Murder by Numbers" unfolds the way most Hollywood product does -- with competence, high production values and not an ounce of anything inspired, unexpected or other than standard-issue. There's a twist at the end, but not so jolting as to keep viewers from thinking about the best route home to beat traffic. The movie will no doubt do just fine at the box office, thanks to Bullock, but not so fine that it won't fade quickly, in time to make room for the next one. "Murder by Numbers" isn't a great movie, but it's a perfectly acceptable widget.
Murder by Numbers (121 minutes, at area theaters) is rated R for violence, language, a sex scene and brief drug use.