THE CRIMINAL

There’s a decidedly Hitchcockian tension to the plight of Londoner Jasper ”J” Rawlins (Mackintosh), whose one-night stand with a pretty blonde ends when an intruder slashes her throat, leaving J as the prime suspect. But what follows is strictly post- (and sub-) Hitch: an increasingly tangled on-the-run thriller, unspooling in a fragmented, flashback-strewn time frame that’s a little too arty for its own good. By the end, though, the film does come together, building to a final twist that lets us know with a jolt that we’re not in Hitchcock’s London anymore.