The screenplay of The Whistlers is deliberately a few steps ahead of its viewers and is deliberately a little cryptic. What seems, and in many ways is, a fun, dark, finely crafted thriller is actually somewhat impenetrable. It just might be the kind of film that yields more and more after each viewing—or it might be a relatively minor work of an otherwise accomplished director. At the very least, it holds, and is worth, your attention.

Balding, middle-age police inspector Cristi (Vlad Ivanov) has flown from Romania to the Canary Islands to learn a secret whistling language. Teaching him are Gilda (Catrinel Marlon), dressed and made up as a traditional femme fatale, and crime boss Paco (Augustí Villaronga) and his gang. Their objective: to spring Zsolt (Sabin Tambrea), a mattress warehouse owner who launders drug money, out of prison in Bucharest—Cristi has ties with Zsolt, and Gilda is in love with him. The whistling language is an ancient, insular, almost secret language, and will presumably help them accomplish their task.

Describing more of the globetrotting film’s intentionally convoluted plot would be pointless, except to say that it is surprising how little whistling there actually is, considering how much comic potential there is in this device. The story bends and twists. Always viewers are learning a new angle on the events, always it feels as though the characters and their motives are slightly beyond our grasp.

Corneliu Porumboiu (12:08 East of Bucharest) has a wonderful touch for creating dark, deadpan, absurd films. All three adjectives could describe The Whistlers, his most narrative-driven (and genre-oriented) movie by far. Certainly we feel that we are in expert hands here. The action moves at a clipped pace, and there are fascinating recurring motifs, such as the contrast between music and silence. Many shots are framed distinctively, and all the characters exist credibly within the director’s numb, droll world.

In spite of the director’s clear skill, much of the action feels as though it has no real weight, possibly because the story line checks off many classic gangster/noir tropes, which Porumboiu ultimately does not deviate from in any significant way. It felt as though we were not fully seeing the characters in their full, absurd selves. Instead, they were stifled by the conventionality of the narrative, and the film falls limp.

The feeling of not fully knowing or understanding the characters, especially Cristi, made me feel as though I was missing something. Perhaps that was Porumboiu’s intention. My first impression of the movie is one of impressive but unfulfilled potential, with an overemphasis on twists and turns. Regardless, The Whistlers will be of special interest for those with a penchant for grim absurdity, and it is sufficiently different from other heist-gone-wrong films to be worth their time.