The Burning Plain

Guillermo Arriaga's latest directorial outing is a giant swirl of a movie - sometimes brilliant, sometimes utterly mystifying - which ties together places, people and times, but lacks an emotional thrum.

We start in New Mexico (but along the way we make several trips up to Oregon) for a tale that binds two lovers, Nick (Joaquim de Almeida) and Gina (Kim Basinger), a trailer explosion, a messy funeral and a burgeoning relationship between Nick's son Santiago (JD Pardo) and Gina's daughter Mariana (Jennifer Lawrence)

In Oregon, the story is seemingly unconnected as we follow restaurant owner Sylvia (Charlize Theron), who harbours some kind of dark secret while having unemotional clinches with various gentlemen and being shadowed by a man named Carlos (Jose Maria Yazpik). When we turn tail again for New Mexico, we find the now fully-grown Santiago (Danny Pino) grafting alongside Carlos and still in love with Mariana.

Eventually all the stories knot up semi-neatly, but by the time we get there we are exhausted and a little disengaged. While Theron and Basinger do make for some compelling viewing, it's the turns by Pardo and Lawrence that give this otherwise lukewarm movie a little red-blooded heat. ·