Camilla Belle in The American Side

Noir films walk a fine line. They work best when the star sleuth is an everyman, someone scraping to get by, relying more on intuition and elbow grease than on Sherlockian genius. But if they go too far in seeking that average Joe, the hero can become ineffective, rendered passive and perplexed when faced with a real mystery. This is the struggle The American Side finds itself in.

Its hero, Charlie Paczynski (Greg Stuhr, also co-writing), is plenty hard-boiled and as quippy as they come, but he can’t seem to investigate himself out of a cardboard box. Rather than outmaneuvering the conspirators with cunning and gumption, Paczynski simply wanders about, confounded, as a revolving door of supporting characters do their best to fill him in. He compares himself to Mike Hammer, Mickey Spillane’s pugilistic gumshoe, but Paczynski has neither the confidence nor the violence of his role model.

Aside from that, The American Side has a lot to recommend it. An ambitious trust-no-one thriller, director and co-writer Jenna Ricker takes old conspiracy theory fodder and uses it to build a twisted web of intrigue. The setup: In 1943, Nikola Tesla died alone and penniless, raving about inventing a death ray. As the film tells it, his notebook, filled with a wide array of sci-fi innovations, was already missing when the coroner arrived. In present day Buffalo, it has resurfaced. All manner of crooked factions, including Serbian nationalists, the FBI, and Matthew Broderick as the urbane Borden Chase, vie for this one page from Tesla’s notebook. Poor Paczynski, a hapless bystander, simply gets caught up in the crossfire.

As the characters decide whether or not to burn the page, the film raises cutting questions about whether society is mature enough to handle technology with such destructive potential. Perhaps the film’s best asset is the camera, which picks up all manner of subtleties that might otherwise be swept away in the frenetic plot. The cinematography paints scenes in warm hues that well evoke the films of the 1970s.

However, Paczynski consistently proves to be a poor tentpole, and the plot collapses around him. Scenes are often brief and disjointed; many are little more than a talking head exchanging a bit of banter with the detective before telling him where to find the next talking head. It’s possible that much of the film’s substance and connective tissue ended up on the cutting room floor in order to reach the hallowed 90-minute mark. This is particularly a shame in a genre that thrives when given time to breathe.

In many ways, The American Side has it all—crackling wit, crazy science, and dames as wicked as they are beautiful. Somewhere in there, there’s a classic noir along the lines of The Big Sleep and Devil in a Blue Dress. I just wouldn’t hire Charlie Paczynski to find it.